Wesleyan University - Olla Podrida Yearbook (Middletown, CT)

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Or his power of clear and forceful exposition, which his wider audiences as well as his students know so well. One would certainly have tried to dwell appropriately upon his more than national reputation, which after all is only the natural fruitage of such talents as his. H ' But I do not intend to mention any of these things. I spare him. Besides, in view of the point to which I am coming, it is important to say that these after all are not the things which bulk largest when Professor Dodgeis friends think of him. That which fills the foreground of our consciousness is just the sense of his personal friendship for us. A strangely inspiring and quickening friendship it is too. As I have tried to focus it during these months of comparative separation, its in- spiration seems to lie not chiefly in the impress of his own qualities, com- pelling as these are, nor in his sightly and attractive viewpoints. I am sure it springs primarily from the sleuthlike way in which he finds in a friend, and as it were rescues for the benefit of that friend, some half smothered aspiration or some half hidden ideal, all the while masking his own activity in the matter with a sort of playful and distracting banter, and then leaves his find', lying casually about, where his friend will pres- ently come upon- it and have all the joy of its discovery! Am I not right? And are there many things within the scope of friendship which are finer than such an act? E 'But in saying this I am running a grievous personal risk. Not for the world would I have Professor Dodge aware that at last I am onto', his methods. If he should ever happen upon this exhibit, our next en- counter might be embarrassing for both of us, certainly for me. I will thank you therefore, Mr. Editor, to see t.hat the rest of the Olla Podrida is just as interesting and diverting as you know how to make it. 9

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Professor itkapmnnh Zbuhgzmg jfrienh 3819 MH. QB. Zgtalilzp IVISECTION undoubtedly has its points. But neither it, nor t.hey, will ever become wildly popular among the vivisected. - Vivisection of personality is just as painful to the victim, if he knows of it, as ante-mortem ,dissection of tissue. And the fact that a trained and generally well disposed psychologist personally conducts it does not in the least abate the squirming. Once I had the misfortune-however, we had better let that pass. But what a capital opportunity this would have been to balance ac- counts, and to return to Professor Dodge the same cheek and another one also! This opportunity must also be allowed to pass. I shall not, in my turn. presume on the safety of distance. E Otherwise, much might have been said of Professor Dodge's ingenuity: of his skill in adapting mechanical means to experimental ends, and of that manual as well as mental dexterity, which have made him the originator of instruments whose use is familiar in psychological laboratories on both sides of the Atlantic. One must have mentioned also the keenly analytical quality of his mind, and his marked ability to pounce at once upon t.he vital element of a problem or puzzling situation, and to drag it out into a place in the sun and hold it there, till we, duller eyed astigmatics, begin to see it too. Likewise the quiet but grim tenacity with which he grips whatever seems to him worth doing, the zest which obstacles arouse in him. and the chuckles in which he indulges with a friend, as he contemplates the cer- tainty of the outcome. Or his weird but kindly insight into our mental processes and motives. Perhaps such insight is one of the first-fruits of psychological attainment. Or perhaps some of us are rather easy reading. I really cannot say. Or his sound and practical judgment, to which many of us make frequent pilgrimage. S

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