Knox College - Gale Yearbook (Galesburg, IL)

Page 10 text:

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Page 9 text:

K N OX conuzcs 6 D E D I C A T l O N THE GALE NINETEEN-TEN TO WILLIAM EDWARD SIMONDS A STUDENT APPREc1AT1oN By ALI-EN Ayuuuiyr GIQEEN You're a man of the student's choiceg Square as the square of steel. You're as staunch and strong As the day is long, And a friend that we all call-REAL. Your Way is the sort we like, A genial, cordial way. And your gentle voice Makes the heart rejoice Till it glows through the livelong day. You've a manner that's all your own. You've a smile that we can't compare. And at your command ls the grasp of a hand With a touch that is magic there. You're a friend that we all adoreg One of the student band. And we'll shout for you VVhile our colors true Flutter on every hand. You're a man of the student's choiceg Square as the square of steel. You're as staunch and strong As the day is long, And a friend that we all call-REAL..

Page 11 text:

THE GALE NINETEEN-TEN PROFESSOR SIMONDS By Buss PERRY 3jUST before sitting down to comply with the request of the editor of the GALE, who has asked me to write something about Professor Simonds, T happened to take from its dusty shelf a bound volume of lecture notes on English vowel sounds, made long ago in a German class room. My intention was to p1'0VC to a Harvard graduate student of the present epoch that 'his elders had also, in their day. kept their noses tolerably near the grindstone. But out of the decorus note-book tumbled a folded sheet of foolscap, inscribed in Simonds' familiar hand to Seinem lieben freunde, R. Perry. It was a page of the original manu- script of Simonds' doctoral dissertation at Strassburg, on Sir Thomas Wyatt. 'But why dedicated to me? At this gracious distance from the event. there is no treachery in explaining. On t'he despondency resulting from long labor upon his dissertation, combined with worrying over the examination, Simonds had been rash enough, in one passage of his thesis, to write thus: lXfleanwhile, the results to be gained by continuing the examination of the two texts in this uncertain way are too slight and too indefinite to warrant spending much more time upon it. This statement was true enough, for all T know, but I was alarmed over the possi- ble effect upon the mind of Professor Ten Brink, who had to pass upon the merits of Simonds' investigations. I begged him not to admit, in this fashion, that his labor had been in vain. VVhereupon Simonds, too discouraged to care what he was writing, deleted the above-quoted sentence and composed this extraor- dinary substitute: Meanwhile, t'he results obtained are sufficient and satisfactory. and especially valuable in demonstrating the priority of the Harrington text. This is of course most important for us to know. Thus amended, the dissertation passed Ten Brink, and Simonds won his Ph. D. But he presented his cautious friend with that corrected Ms. page, to serve as a cynical reminder of the il1SiClG view of academic honors. This is a trivial anecdote, and the Strassburg student days are far behind us now. Kindly Professor Ten Brink, greatest of ghosts, is no doubt sipping his Rhine wine and smoking his one mild cigar beside some Elysian stream,-and chafing the Baconians, if there are any Raconians there. Simonds and his critiC are staid college professors in America, and the nightingalcs are singing in the Alsatian gardens for some one else to hear. But it was a fair seed-timenfor one's soul, while it lasted, and that folded page of the dissertation on Sir Thomas Wyatt brings it all back again. We did not know much about Siinonds at that time except that he was a graduate Of Brown, that he had an eye for picking a good restaurant in an unprom- ising StrCC'f. Illlfl that he had a knack of writing peculiarly graceful English. VVe 1'6- ioiced in his Ph. D.. and were glad to hear, after a year or two, that he had been Called to a college of such fine traditions and standards as Knox. But there are few of us who can remember the exact size of his family, or the titles of the books K N OX cou.sca :- I D E D l C A T I 0 N