Swarthmore College - Halcyon Yearbook (Swarthmore, PA)

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THE HALCYON OF NINETEEN SEVENTEEN administration closed. In April, 1 888, I first met him, when I was a candidate for the Chair of Biology. He took me into his office, I remember, and showed me a wonderful scheme that he had invented for arranging the program of class work. A large board was fastened against the wall, and this was divided by lines, vertical and horizontal, into spaces to represent the days of the week and the hours of each working day. In these spaces auger holes were bored, into which corks fitted, each cork having pasted on its top the name of some course. Doctor Magill would play a regular game, moving these corks about to get the courses in their right places and avoid conflicts. It was a great old time- table, and very graphic. When I took up the work in September, 1 888, I was handed a small notebook, made out by the President, of the work assigned me. There were Zoology- Botany (double-headers for both Freshman and Sophomore Classes), laboratory courses for the Juniors and Seniors, a course in Geology, and Physiology for the young men. Every other hour of daylight was marked Work in the Museum. Beside all this, I took charge of study hour in Collection Hall three even- ings a week for an hour and a half, and the third and fourth West Wing floors all the rest of those evenings. They were some evenings. Lights went out somewhere around nine o ' clock; after that I was supposed to go on a still hunt, looking out for illicit candles. Once I was invited by certain boys — Morris Clothier, Lex Cummins, Bill Sproul, and other kindred spirits — to a late and clandestine feed. I went, had a good time, and said nothing about it. Dean Bond (Elizabeth Powell Bond) was then styled Matron, a charming woman whom we all love and who is still with us at times. I met Doctor William Hyde Appleton that spring of ' 88, and began one of the finest friendships I have known. His influence at Swarthmore has been unique, and no mat- ter how hackneyed the phrase may be, one thinks of Doctor Appleton always as the gentleman and the scholar. and it is the privilege of many to know him more intimately as friend. Miss Esther T. Moore (now Mrs. Appleton) THE NAUGHTY WASTE BASKET THE FURTIVE CANDLE Page Thirteen

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THE HALCYON OF NINETEEN SEVENTEEN Immediately to the west of the college is the heavily wooded slope of the Crum valley, and to the back there stretches a rolling farm country with much fine woodland. The Swarthmore campus is almost unique in the natural beauty of its expansive slope and sur- rounding rural landscape. A piece of land adjoining the original college property was later purchased, and by this the college acquired not merely more land but an interest in old colonial history and in the his- tory of art, for on this piece of land stood the house in which Benjamin West was born. In the old days (long before our time) the Chester Road ran just to the north of it, coming across what is now the campus from a southwest direction to join the THE BENJAMIN WEST HOUSE king ' s Highway (the present Baltimore Pike). Cedar Lane is the northern part of this old road to-day. Just where it passed the West House there is still to be seen an ancient stone horse block. The pres- ent site of the girls ' tennis courts and hockey field was for many years a piece of fallow that sloped gently up toward the college, and here, about the time of spring vacation, a great many daffodils bloomed — escapes no doubt from an old dooryard garden, for all we know possibly from some old English bulbs. Dean Bond later had them all dug up and replanted in the flower beds, where you m ay still find them taking the winds of March with beauty. Benjamin ' s birth in the old house was a somewhat haphazard circumstance (a bit fortuitous for Swarthmoreans) , for his family moved there temporarily from Chester at the time the great yellow fever epidemic. When the railroad was run through from Philadelphia to West Chester in 1858, a station was built just west of the present road crossing and on this side of the track, and called Westdale. The old willows that stood so long at the lower end of the campus (the last one was cut down this past fall) are said to mark the site of a springhouse about which they grew. Edward Parrish was the first President of Swarthmore, and his memory is com- memorated in Parrish Hall. He was succeeded by Edward H. Magill, who was President from 1871 to 1889. Doctor Magill was a master of the old school, and Swarthmore will ever remain his debtor. To him belongs the credit of all those early years of the college life — years when it was growing from the boarding school toward the college ideal. I was fortunate enough to come to Swarthmore before Doctor Magill ' s d Pa c Tzvelve

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THE HALCYON OF NINETEEN SEVENTEEN was then Registrar, and she helped us all, especially Doctor Magill with the cork game. Another good friend of mine was Miss Cunningham, and we still meet oc- casionally and renew old times. Arthur Beardsley was Professor of Engineering, and the men he turned out are his monument. Gerrit Weaver was Professor of German. He was a good ama- teur naturalist and an altogether delightful fellow, who passed a hobnailed liver from our midst too soon. He it was who showed me how to make a cuspidisr out of a waste basket, by building a sort of rats ' nest. We were in great jeopardy in those days — we users of the vile weed. I was reported once by a Co-ed for riding in the smoker. (I don ' t think she was a very pretty Co-ed and that made it not so bad). The largest font of type used in the catalogues of those days, aside from the cover, referred m no un- certain terms to the use of tobacco. Doctor Magill almost rivalled James the Second in his famous Counterblast — the insidious habit, the hellward slope, alcoholic sclerosis hobnailed liver, were pictured in lurid colors. And yet I am still living, and comparatively sane and well. Magill had a very effective way of getting students to own up as participants in some disturbance. He would harangue the student body at Collection or some other time, and then, holding a folded paper in his hand, would say: I have the names of all those students who were in that disturbance right here in my hand; it is useless for you to try to evade this. What the good doctor held was the pages from the catalogue, with the list of all students. It was a good joke, too good to keep, and the President himself, I believe, finally gave it away. We always looked for trouble on the floors at Hallowe ' en, and were s - | not disappointed. That autumn of ' 88, when I was on duty, some boy had a cow-bell that jangled loudly in various parts of the West Wing oft in the stilly night. For several nights Doc- tor Magill sat up with me into the wee, small hours. I can see him now in his wrapper, scouting around like an Indian. He thor- THE ELUSIVE COW-BELL Page Fourteen