Swarthmore College - Halcyon Yearbook (Swarthmore, PA)

Page 23 text:

THE HALCYON OF NINETEEN SEVENTEEN in a little shack on the other side of the platform. The old station had steps leading up to the waiting room, and Ellis Yarnall, the present station-master, and his wife have been there since before my time. The double track system ended just east of the road cross- ing; Michael was not here then, and the crossing was unguarded except for the switch- man. The oaks along the asphaltum were runts. There was no library building; no Somerville Hall; no Wharton Hall. The boys ' gym was in an old ramshackle build- ing by the laundry. Whittier Field had just been completed, and Doc Shell was the Physical Director. Before this time, football was played on the lower part of the campus, and the grass tennis courts were along the walk in front of Parrish Hall. There was no pie shop nearer than Media; no trolley line during the first half dozen years after I came. The Sproul Observatory is on the site where the President ' s house once stood. Chemistry, Physics, and Engineering were all done in the Science Building. MICH. EL ON GU. RD Among the present members of the faculty who have been in college as students dur- ing my time, and some of them in my classes, are Battin, Baldwin, Robmson, Fussell, Palmer, Johnson, Gilkyson, Hicks, Mrs. Newport, Mrs. Griffin, Miss Peirce, Miss Walker, Miss Oliver, and Miss Vest and Miss Burnett of last year ' s graduating class. Of other members of the college staff — Miss Coale, the pleasant Matron of Wharton, came in the early nineties; Miss Lukens has cheerfully dispensed all needful things from the same little old book room these many years, and she was a student here and took her degree back m the nmeties. I thmk she was m one of my classes. I used to meet her at Mrs. Townsend ' s table (Mrs. Townsend was Housekeeper in the early times, and died here). We had much good times at her table, with extra good things in the way of food. Here Miss Cunningham would sometimes come, and regale us with her opinion of cer- Page Seventeen

Page 22 text:

THE HALCYON OF NINETEEN SEVENTEEN floor West, in what are now, I think. Doctor Baldwin ' s rooms, and who helped run the study hour and the floors (we worked alternate nights). When off police duty. Smith taught rhetoric. The story goes that he once got shut in a folding fed, and Mrs. Smith had to get him out. He was a bit timid of high places, and being a married man (I was not at the time) once asked me to creep along the outside ledge of the fourth floor, in a nor ' west gale, and look in certain win- dows for boys supposed to have gone down the fire escape and across country to Morton for a night off. That night I realized that, though I had no degree of A.B., I was entitled to it — not Bachelor of Arts in my case, but able-bodied sea- man. I lived in the college for three months; that was in the days of the Preparatory School, the three classes of ON THE CORNICE IN A G. LE which, together with the Freshmen, oc- Icupied the present Collection Hall in the evening, studying at desks for an hour and a half. I sat on the platform looking over this studious (?) throng (likewise overlooking much). Upper classmen were given to appearing at the doors of the dark gallery above, and throwing divers unseemly articles at these innocents. This life was too strenuous for me, and when George A. Hoadley came, in Novem- ber, I 888, I asked to have the police job turned over to him. From that time on I be- came a communter. Hoadley is a fine type of the New England man, resourceful, versatile, and a good friend of his students and colleagues. I think it was the late Presi- dent Birdsall who once remarked that Hoadley was the wheel horse of the faculty. He certainly took the heavy end of a great deal of the work of administration for many years. After Doctor Appleton resigned, Charles De Garmo was elected President and served seven years. He was an enthusiastic man, fresh from the Middle West, rich in pedagogical ideas, six-foot in his stockings and bearded like a pard. De Garmo went to Cornell as Professor of Education, and the presidential mantle fell on William W. Birdsall, of the Friends ' Central School, a man of high purpose. In i 902 came our own well-beloved President Swain. As you see, I have been through five administrations. When I first came to Swarthmore, there was nothing but open country to the south of the railroad. Tom Dolphin (the present deputy postmaster) ran the old post office STUDIOUS PREPS Page Sixteen

Page 24 text:

THE HALCYON OF NINETEEN SEVENTEEN tain students (always entertaining and very much to the point). The hbrary used to be presided over by Miss Nowell, a kindly lady and a lover of wild flowers. The old library was in a room that is now part of the English class work, opposite Col- lection Hall. Frank Getz, the gardener, and Johnny Honan, the engineer, were here when I came, and are still here. Mr. Durnall has run the farm for many years, though he came after Frank- lin Hall, who was here when I arrived. Billy Mullen and Johnny Hayman were faithful souls that have passed away, as the tablets on the wall of the lower hall will tell us. George Highbarger has been working year in and year out in the same little shop. He came a few years after I did. Bridget, I believe, is still with us. She was here long before my time, possibly a survival of the Pleistocene. BRIDGET And so it goes. I was asked to write a short history of Swarthmore; I am afraid it has turned out to be a history of my own reminiscences, and mainly trifling incidents at that. It is curious how trifling incidents bulk so large in one ' s memory, but then a man ' s life is a web of trifling incidents, and history is the sum of the lives and activities of many men through succeeding generations. From the point of view of one man, this sketch, then, might be regarded as a small part of college history. Spencer Trotter. MISS LUKENS Page Eighteen