Worcester Polytechnic Institute - Peddler Yearbook (Worcester, MA)

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M We are nearing the end. At the same time, we are approaching com¬ mencement. Soon we shall stop climbing the Hill of Tech and tackle the Ladder of Life. I seem to hear the old familiar order, “You may lay aside your books and take your papers.” I have laid aside my books,—a Junior gave me seventy-one cents for the lot. I will take my papers and try to gather together from out of the shadowy memories of the past some of the events and incidents in the History of the Class of Ninety-Nine. Our entry into the sanitarium for the Prevention of Rest was under the most auspicious of circumstances. The Engineering Laboratories had just been completed, and the Power-House was nearing a finish. A kind friend of the Institute had presented the shop with a new grindstone and had prom¬ ised a pair of pliers, while the Electrical Department had received a large coil of wire and a bill for repairs on the three-volt voltmeter. Furthermore, the Trustees had about made up M. P’s mind that students could not rise on elevators,—that is to say, that the student’s mind could not improve on the low range of work offered by elevator construction ; M. P. was consequently getting ready to pick up his dolls ($) and go. In fact, everything was booming, and the future was of a gorgeous golden orange shellac hue, when, with implicit faith in the pleasant little extravagancies of the catalogue, we

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SOPHOMORE CLASS.

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2 $ climbed the hill, entered chapel, and were mustered into active technical ser¬ vice as the Class of Eighteen Ninety-Nine, on the afternoon of September 16th, 1895. jfreebman U?ear. After being carefully dissected into four divisions, our young efforts were turned toward the pleasing pastime of finding the localities known as Free-hand Drawing-Room, Mechanical Labs.,” “Mathematical Parlor, Salisbury Labs.,” or Cell Eighteen, Boynton Hall.” Alas! we know where all of them are now,—not slightly, but too well. We next turned our attention to the time-honored custom of grinding,— we wanted to get a good reputation with the faculty, and, incidentally, we then thought that these old and valuable school customs must and should be preserved. During the first two or three months we received our introduc¬ tion to the various mysterious things which may be found, in a frame, in the first part of the catalogue under the title, Freshman Year, First Term.” Under the fatherly direction of Danny, we entered the realms of Chem¬ istry, and soon learned how to turn litmus paper red, white and blue, how to poison people by feeding them arsenic disguised as wall-paper, or find out if our stomach contained phosphorous by boiling it in a wash tub; and it is safe to say we got more enjoyment out of those chemistry lectures than from any other subject of our first term. Can any of us forget the roar of laughter that shook the room when Dan tenderly pulled the featherless carcass of a pigeon from the preserving charcoal dust and observed, thoughtfully, It’s a bird ”. As a side issue, in the chemical laboratory we bent glass tubing into all sorts of fantastic shapes, made all sorts of gases and acids, testing the latter on our note books, or desk, or clothes, or anything else of value which happened to be around when the stuff got spilled, and we can certify that the beauty of our concoctions and the deep yellow color of their odors have never been surpassed by those of any other class. In the mathematical line we tackled college algebra with Dr. Conant, and juggled with all sorts of progressions, permutations, combinations, in- determinates, and equations, whose roots extended all over the lot. Here we learned the circumstances under which Archimedes first made the dis¬ covery that water is wet, how Pythagoras juggled Geometry, and why New-