Wheaton College - Tower Yearbook (Wheaton, IL)

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-11 f-21 af' 'ln fffw 44 '24 v-fd 'l' 'Y' ff-s v-:1jf'1 rid eff F24 TffalT'Tff4l'TffAFTfiFTAl?falFy!JAlF'TffaLik - - J vffokwikwalxfolyfalgfalyfakxxifoly TRADITIGNS 013 WHEATO It is hard to tell just how and why an old building differs from a new one, and yet there is a difference too intangible to yield to definition, and too real to be de- nied. In a new building the very emptiness is oppres- sive, and in an old one, one has the consciousness of an invisible presence that is not the dinginess nor the scuffed woodwork, but rather a legacy from the peo- ple who have made the scuffs and wrought the dingi- ness. It is as if each one of them had unconsciously left a part of himself, or a fragment of his soul, which wanders in a disembodied form through the old halls and rooms. s If you are too young, or too wise, or too sophisticat- ed, to believe this, I hope that you will sometime lose yourself on a dark night in this old building. As you bump against forgotten posts and strange walls, the shades of former days will press in upon you, almost stifling you with the poignancy' of their presence as they put out trembling hands to stay you in your flight, and you will find yourself outside, running, running, running, running, running from the past. Perhaps you will understand the soul of the old building then. Perhaps I can tell you a little about it now. At least I have tried to glean a few of the old sto- ries from the silent walls and blank windows. There are three stories which have been handed down from time immemorial. There are versions and versions, but I will record here only those that please me. In the first place, there is the story of the man who walkedaround the roof of the main building. His name has long since died, but his exploit lives. One version of the story says that the men on the fourth floor had been disturbed by strange noises on the roof. They finally decided that there were some loose shutters on a little shed which originally covered a tank. One boy dared another to go out and nail the shutters tight. Whether for this reason or not, the feat was certainly accomplished. There was only a narrow ledge on which to walk, and below that, space and darkness. Some say that he walked in his sleep, others that he did it for a box of candy. Whatever his reason, every one agrees that he walked around the edge of the roof one dark night, and lived to tell the tale. This story reminds me of one which happened more recently, and in the gymnasium. During Christmas vacation one of the boys was living there alone. After dark the gym is a ghostly place, to say the least. And before he went to bed, he took great care to see that every door and window was locked. During the night, he awoke suddenly with the impression that some one was or had been in the room. When he got up, he found the door swinging open, but no one around. Another night, when he was alone in the basement, and the light was out, he swears that something came hurtling through the air and crashed against the wall near him. I-Ie did not wait to inquire more definitely into the matter, but the next morning when he re- turned he found a heavy dumb-bell lying in splinters on the floor. From time to time this same boy was startled to hear some one on the floor above walking slowly around the track. The walk was like the tramp of a sentinel, slow and steady. After this had happened several times he gathered his courage and started to climb the stairs. Above him he could hear the steady tramp, tramp, tramp of heavy boots onthe track. It took three or four attempts before he reached the top of the stairs. There was enough light to see a little. The heavy tramping continued, but there was no one there. When his fright had abated, he moved about more boldly, and found that the sentinel was only the grat- ing on one of the windows which had worked loose and was banging against the window frame. Another tradition which is often spoken of, but which no one seems to be able to do much more than speculate about, is the elevator. All that is left of it is the shaft which goes up through the lower chapel and the physics laboratory. Some people say that a man once fell down the ele- vator shaft, and that since then the elevator has not been used g and others that the system fell into disre- pair and so was abandoned. At any rate I have found out what its use was. In early days the third floor was a girl's dormitory. The Aelioian room was the parlor where ladies entertained callers. There was a lamp hanging from the ceiling, and a marble-topped table stood in the center of the room. Last year one time n-'A 0-'Q o-'A rn! o-,Q a-'A r-In IJA nb. ' rn' 'JN 0,0 I 'J' 4 F, IJ' .X-Z. ogjaxilokwJoxv,.x2oX-Jaxx, 0L,' 'xv,0,v,'Xif'xv,'x-1'kv1'x...X L54-gbifqtlj-j4LvJkyxrJtLNfJ.Ls4f Lvytbw-5f JxL.ff.Lw-ff 1F?f.1f'ff.1T1rQ.Nff.L J.LN'mL ff41?' A 4 Ak 4

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x 'X , ' 'X' s :NLS 0,1 6,4 FLW I R DLS 611 OLS A L 0,9 f+'4 IJQ r 1 r 1 fn! IJQ pn! 'z.x,2 . Xvl' 25115.34 . 0 L 'XZ ' X.,..f x,! . x..fI.x...' .,x,!'. ,R-f,. X,,f ' 'xx' fx-f X IYVIYIAL J, ,XTf,VJ,1?'ffL' K Q?Ji'U,1, qi, .f,1, 11.1, Jn?-4f.i?'fj,i, J,iF'7 Yf. . 'HLVL al when I was poking around in the attic at the dormito- ry, I found an ancient curly sofa, which conforms very nearly to and probably is that one that used to stand where the paino is now. The whole building was very different then, but that is history and not tradition, and I suppose history five times a week in the morning is enough. At any rate the elevator had a use in these days other than carrying trunks and furniture up to the second and third floors. Every day at four o'clock the janitor laboriously pulled it up with a load of coal. When he got to the third floor he rang a bell, and every girl who wanted coal for that night or the next day came with her scut- tle and filled it. Incidentally, in those days there were rules even as now, and one of them was that no girl could sit with her feet in the transom. I wish I knew how they ac- complished this acrobatic feat. One of two things must be true: either the girls had longer legs, or the tran- soms were lower. The bell in the tower has long since fallen out of constant use, but one use it still has, which thrills every Wheaton student with a never-to-be-forgotten pride. If the team has gone elsewhere to play, and no word has come from then, and suddenly you are awak- ened at one or two in the morning by the mad pealing of the bell, be. sure that it is time to celebrate another 4 , , ' ,,. V- ...tw . .A -,.4 I - r'7l',-K , ,V , . gl lg 5 wwe, X 4-'A 9-'ag 9-'A 6', 5 5.0 f'A I-'A fn! 0,0 CR ,Jn 1-'A n'a r-In 'fa dN'19 gja 1-'4 f'fQ 19 I xfs- va - X- eft- i:f'r:2'Yf qi, J bi, fi, J,i,v1,i 13, 141, qi Ji, S,QJN-if,13'if,i, .f,i7'if,iT'ffp. ,f,r,'.f,t LQ, Jn, Unk.