Latin School of Chicago - Sigillum Yearbook (Chicago, IL)

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llnce Upon A Time GEORGE N. NORTHROP HEN I hurried back from Europe in the autumn of IQ26 to take charge of The Chicago Latin School I found the fine new schoolhouse on North Dearborn Parkway still in the hands of the carpenters, plasterers, and painters. The first meeting of the Trustees was held in the open air on the pavement in the shadow of the Georgian facade. We decided to convoke the school on the day set, and then send the boys home for a week or two until the building was all habitable. All that autumn and early winter lessons were recited to the nerve-wracking accompaniment of the hammer and the saw, a sort of preliminary training for the per- nicious radio accompaniment to study so prevalent among the more neurotic striplings of our day. VVe inhaled quantities of turpentine and hardened ourselves in draughts and an atmosphere redolent of damp plaster. Incidentally I had arrived just in time to prevent what is now the library from being used as the physics laboratory. The present headmaster's ofiice was the sanctum of the athletic director. There was practically no 'flocal habitation provided for the executive. The memory of two strong personalities persists. The President of the Board, Frank Porter, and the Vice-President, Kersey Reed, were among the finest men I have known, foursquare, rnagnanimous, subscribers to the highest ideals of conduct and eager to co-operate in every way toward the best educational standards for the reorgan- ized school. The untimely loss of these men so soon afterward was an irreparable blow to those of us who had been associated with them. With them died something very precious for the wel- fare of the school, and for those of us who treasured their friendship. Nor shall I ever forget the kind hospitality of Mr. and Mrs. E. I. Cudahy or the optimistic eHiciency of the latter and her solicitude for the comfort and well being of the school. She it was who lent us Miss Lynch. Those days of reorganization were not without their confiicts. With something of a Beowulf's complacency do I recall an en- counter with a pedagogical Grendel, the haughty inspector of the North Central Association, who had come to exact his undeserved tribute. When asked if a standard for graduation based on the College Entrance Examination Board would be sufficiently high to cover certification elsewhere, even at a State University, he said

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SIGILLUM school, by Forrest Adams of the University of Pennsylvania. Marie Arnold taught German through all the years until she resigned a year before her tragic death. Katherine DelVleritt, beloved teacher of French, College Board examiner, and later of the College Board Committee on French, did a great work for us until her death in IQ23. Thomas J. Bosworth, from Harvard, reigned in the English room all the way. E. A. Bates of Yale held forth in Greek and Latin. He attracted to his room squads of small boys by his drawings and cartoons. One admirer, a rising young poet, expressed his approval thus: E is E. A., a cartoonist I see, He's very much nicer than mean old R. P. E. A. designed the covers for the Sigillum and Folio. When he resigned, to follow the pencil, he was succeeded by that ever-popular linguist P. L. Whiting of Harvard. R. P. had first groups in Caesar-Nepos, Cicero, and Virgil. He also started off the Greek beginners with his memonics, P.P.C. and G.D.V.P.C., whatever those cabalistic letters meant. Miss Vickery not only superintended the lower school, but taught high school history classes as well. All the old boys always maintained that they never had instruc- tion anywhere superior to that received from these teachers, of whom Messrs. Adams, Bosworth, and Whiting, still carry on. The high school, being thus devoted to intensive college prepar- tion, had little time for extra-curricular activities, outside the publications and athletics. Under Dr. P. Sprague, now for many years proprietor of Camp Minoqua in Wisconsin, and afterward under Lawrence Eugle, we had more than our share of athletic victories, and developed some good athletes. Did not Yale football get from us Owsley, Gallauer, Stevenson, Spalding, and Veeder? We did a good job and had a good time doing it. It was so in the beginning and is so now.

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SIGILLUM he had never before been asked this question. He beat a hasty retreat and we gladly resigned from the Association and were free to choose a faculty nourished on stronger fare than the unappetizing messes brewed by teachers, colleges. Without that freedom we would have been debarred from the selection of men who have given the school much of its intellectual distinction. It was un- pleasant to find that education was not exempt from racketeering. It was satisfactory to discover that we need not be controlled by racketeers. ' I am afraid I am not a good veteran. If I sit by the campfire it is less in a reminiscent frame of mind than it is in a futuristic one, planning for tomorrow. IVIy dreams deal more with what lies ahead than with what has passed. This does not mean that I am forgetful of old friends and cherished scenes. Perhaps it merely implies that 6'Free from the sick fatigue, the languid doubtl' I still preserve my delusions of youth, even in this oldest of America's private schools. However, I do like occasionally to put an old reel on the memory machine and sit back and count like a miser my gold of recollection. That gold is principally concerned with the personalities of the youths I learned to love and by whose confidence I was honoured during those seven not-uneventful years spent in the heart of our great country. All one's efforts were validated by that experience. In its light one's illusions fade and one's disappointments disappear. Fifty revolutions about the sun take only fifty years to accomplish. The natural laws of the universe have taken care of that, without our help, since The Chicago Latin School first saw the light hit the waves of Lake Michigan. A school continually renews its youth, and really never gets any older. The masters fade, curricula change, the children of trustees grow up and new trustees come along, but the school remains forever young. Boys, page Ponce de Leon! You have my blessing and my felicitations on your birthday, whatever you want to call it numerically. But don't let any one, not even a 'fstuffed-shirt,', tell you that you aren't young. You can't help yourself, and you don't want to.