Swarthmore College - Halcyon Yearbook (Swarthmore, PA)

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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

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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

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THE HALCYON OF NINETEEN SEVENTEEN Some of Swarthmore ' s Old Timers T HE Meeting House and the Cherry Tree, both ho ary with age, have been sung in lyric and blank verse ever since The Halcyon first flapped his wings over the College with the Cupola. Crum Creek also — naughty stream, thou dost nowadays flaunt an unbecoming and un-Swarthmorean tint of garnet, and wouldst sadly offend the artistic sense of the New York Swarthmore Club (see Dr. Roy ' s letter — Can Pink and Magenta With Loyalty Be Called Garnet? — published in The Phoenix). Aliarum rerum laudes carto, and I will begin with the Alligator. The Alligator represents the spirit of our woods incarnate. Although the Classical Department, abetted by the Fine Arts, would with indulgence allow us still to people our groves with dryads, fauns, and Pan himself, practical and unpoetic Pedagogy says nay; that we could not pass the test of- fered to a child of eight years did we be- lieve in such psychological delusions; and that neither itself nor staid Philosophy can allow us more than the Alligator. Well, thousands of students have eaten sandwiches and sausages upon his rugged back, and thousands more will probably partake there of the same delicacies. We wonder whether the viands served at splendid banquets to our Senator Sproul, Morris Clothier, A. Mitchell Palmer, et les auires, are seasoned with the same sauce which they used to taste when feasting near the Alligator. And we would fain ask Mrs. Helen Magill White if she found the dishes upon kings ' tables moredelicious than the impromptu spreads of yore beneath the Swarthmore trees. Our next Old timers come in a group — the Ivies of Parrish Hall. If you will examine their individual biographies, you will be surprised to discover their aristo- cratic connections. Few are of plebeian origin, most of them having been brought from conservative colleges and minsters, castles and palaces. Were the Ivies in- troduced at Swarthmore to teach the feminine portion of our student body the mediaeval lesson of the Clinging Vine? Thou shade of dear Lucretia Mott, and ye more substantial shadows of Hannah Clothier Hull, Mary Hibbard Thatcher, and Ellen Evans Price, no! They were put here to impart the object lesson that tender and not self-seeking vines are willing to cover the blemishes of sterner stuff, and that they remain faithful to their early attachments. THE ALLIGATOR J Page Nineteen