Hobart College - Echo of the Seneca Yearbook (Geneva, NY)

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HOBART Entering Geneva. Looking towards Hobart across Lake Seneca. 8

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THE ECHO of the SENECA HOBART FREE COLLEGE, 1858 It has been one-hundred years since the publication of the first ECHO in 1858. One-hundred years; each possessing a flavor all its own; each marked by an im- measurable variety of thoughts and feelings which seem to fade the instant they come into being, so that Ho- bart’s early years seem lost beyond recovery, but they have not been lost entirely. In the pages of old ECHOS we can regain some of the character of those distant days; we can discover what it meant to be a Hobart stu- dent and what h was like. The very appearance of the early yearbooks brings us back to times that seem strange, even alien. The first ECHO was both formal and pretentious. It was printed in the form of a four page newspaper, the titles were set in florid Gothic type, (some of the capitals were almost lost behind a tangled tracery’of flourishes), and the text was sprinkled with Latin mottos and quotations —untranslated, of course. The writing, was ornate as the lettering, was marked by such unforgettable images as: “Hope, bright glowing hope, the beacon-light to illumine its course o’er the billowy tide of College life,” “Times swift car,” and “Fortune's genial rays.” ft is more than style of composition that makes these passages of poetry and prose seem alien to our own times. 'Ehe style is only a manifestation of a philosophy which viewed life in different terms: which saw world history, past and present, as a sort of moral Aesop's fables, where the whole world was explained by moral standards— timeless, transcendental standards which humble men even more humbly served. And so, the lines read: “Go forth on thy mission.” For life was a mission, meaningless in itself, significant only as it served a, “higher” end. Just as Hobart’s advancement was the higher end to which many men of the past dedicated their lives. Of course, the students often pushed ahead with their mission in a most rollicking fashion. It will remain a paradox that such a staid-seeming times should have given vent to such riotous behavior. The ECHO once gave a partial resume of some of the more spontaneous extra-curricular activities, when, “with misterious regu- larity cows were found in the college chapel placidly awaiting the morning service; cannon balls went thun- dering down dormitory corridors in the middle of the night; . . . professors were locked in their classrooms; lectures were enlivened by the clang of concealed alarm clocks going off at five minute intervals; the horse of “Little Mac,” professor of Greek, who was in the habit of ‘driving out’ on pleasant afternoons, was found turned into a zebra by artistic striping with white paint.” This side-by-side co-existance of boisterousness and formality will always remain a paradox, a paradox that lends its coloring to the unique, never to be repeated, chapter in Hobart’s history, but that has been caught and held in the old pages of the ECHO.

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195» Lake Seneca looking from South Main Street Medbury Hall and the Hobart Library 9