Tarkio College - Tarkiana Yearbook (Tarkio, MO)

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AN ALUMNA TALKS FOR NO APPARENT GOOD REASON. All college students are divided into two classes of which the student body occupies the present, the Alumni the past. The mutual interest existing between the two is rather perfunctory. It is on the one hand the interest we bestow on our grandfather's cousins-- respectful but deprecatingg on the other the half-superior, half-affectionate concern with which we watch our younger brothers and sisters taking possession of our high chairs. As the Alumnus returns for his first visit to his Alma Mater and discovers his familiar haunts full of unfamiliar forms he feels himself adrift and finds himself humming, All Students Look Alike to Mei' to the tune of By Babel,s Streams. And the student in uncon- scious retaliation bumps into the famous half-back of ninety-blank, or brushes past the orator whom the last generation delighted to honor-and never knows! It is the Alumnus in fact who differentiates the most for he is on familiar ground. l-le divides the students into Freshmen, Sophomores, Juniors, Seniors, into Athenians and Ciceronians fhe is only learning about the Forumj, into those who know their A-B-Cs and those who have learned as far as F, into those who are related to Prof. Brown and those who are not. The student, according to his light on future possibilities, asks only, Married or single? ln the confused 'inlinitude of future contingencies he is afraid to steer any further into thevsea of empirical particulars. fThe senior will observe that the Alumnus, at a safe distance, even dares trifle with Schweglerj But really we would recommend you students to take an interest in us Alumni just on the principle of a look before you leap. This is what you are coming to, you know, unless you have bad luck. You will come to us, but we will not return to you fexcept Tom lVliddleton.J And life is very pleasant on this side of the Commencement fence. Upon the student body rests the future of the nation with all the cares and problems per- taining thereto. To the Alumni falls their own share of the immediate present, a burden more tangible and more limited. Student life is a hundred yard dash. The Alumnus finds an occasional mossy stone on which he may sit down and reflect how far he has come and through what pleasant places. For the Alumnus perceives the pleasures of college life more plainly than he saw them as a student and develops a tardy appreciation for the hard knocks. And just as the Sophomore who safe in his room gloats over the wiener-roast of which circumstances required a hasty disposal, so the Alumnus enjoys in retrospect the good times which he was too busy to realize while he was in the thick of them. And yet he smiles his own contented little smile when by chance he hears the fervent chapel speaker aver that life's happiest days are spent in college halls. As though, forsooth, in the old reliable phrase he were saying, Cheer up! the worst is yet to comeln But if we cherish a shade of resentment toward the occupants of our particular high chairs none the less do the affections of the Tarkio College Alumni hark back to their Alma Mater-to the meadow larks and the belfry stair and the wierd palimpsests known as examination boards. And the writer who by a rare privilege sees from the chapel rostrum things erstwhile seen from the sixth row back sends through Tarliiana to Alumni every- where news of the material progress of Tarkio College. It will greet you even beyond 0 QYY 'B V gf , ws. -.. x

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., . if , .. .ra .W ..,. .-... ..sfzim:fsz1s- :L- the campus where the bricks of the sidewalk roundly slopingl' have given place to solid concrete. It will delight you in the increased expanse of velvet turf and in the shady walks where we were bidden to keep off the grass. It speaks in the great clock which tells the perspiring student of to-day when the Philosophy hour is half gone. Within the college halls material advancement is written everywhere. Every available foot of space is in use, and full rooms are crying out for new buildings. The library is running over its I-It y , .lll. I ' ' U- I ... iv- , L ,,.. L, -. , 1... V fait' y V bounds. The laboratories are crowded in twice the space they once had. Even the chapel is used for class work and the music department fills in all the chinks. The men's hall will not hold the applicants nor the '04 chairs the Faculty. CThis refers only to numbers., There are a hundred small improvements which indicate a broadening in- Huence. But there is something beyond these visible and tangible evidences of growth. College requirements and college standards are more appreciated and more honored than they once were. The Habby and irresponsible student is still with us, but in diminishing number, and the student body is developing a little further each year into the dignity and self-reliance which by right belongs to them. In fact, fratres sororesque alumnorum, they get on remarkably well without us. An interesting race is on between the student body and the Alumni, as to numbers. With a varying but never failing annual increment the Alumni roll has grown to 227, but still the student enrollment Hutters on ahead. Wonderfully scattered, these 227 young people are watching their college with friendly and expectant eyes, and after a gridiron or a platform victory here, pyramid and iceberg serve as sounding boards for Tarkio cheers. Even our Alumni who belong to the ancient history of the eighties are still young and active. The class of '87, which went into politics, is being mentioned for mayor of our city. The class of '88 took up banking. The scientihc member of this class has recently been honored with the cashiership of a Western bank with near half a million deposits and almost as much loans, while the classical half has just been elected second vice-president of the State National Bank of St. Louis. Two of our mediaeval members have followed this lead into responsible cashierships, and we hope more will followg we are looking to the bankers to increase our endowment. The class of '89 divided. Two men took the ministry, two the law. These professions have had popular followings. We have law- yers galore while fully a fifth of our Alumni have gone into different lines of religious work. This does not include those who have married into the ministry. The '89 girls all married save one who pioneered the teaching profession and brought in the first lVlaster's degree, holding an assistant professorship to-day in Lawrence University. The mediaeval history of the nineties follows on in much the same lines, but we find among these prob' ably our wealthiest representatives-the farmers, and with them a, number of doctors and a few merchants. The modern history of the twentieth century is too recent to cover. A large per cent of the Alumni have done graduate work. From far and near they join in respects to their Alma Mater and good wishes to Tarffiana. CARO LYNN, '95, -71-