Yale University - Banner / Pot Pourri Yearbook (New Haven, CT)

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A Bit of G Gi AMPUS characters of all sorts have made Yale their base of opera- tions for many generations. Most colorful of all Yale ' s characters was the late nineteenth century ' s George Joseph Hannibal, L. W. Silliman, Es- quire, whose object in life was to deliver his stock of molasses candy into the inouths of Yale men, while delivering his own brand of native humor. His age: I ' m getting so old that I can re- member when East Rock, sah, was a mere pebble. Not wishing, even under the most superlative temptation, to interrupt the gentlemen in their studies, I beg to ask whether they are not moved to purchase a package of my old-fashioned, home- made molasses candy, Hannibal, as he was more simply called, would begin. Very often he would sell his candy, too, and then occasionally make a little extra something by betting an inexperienced freshman that the latter could not name the middle letter of the alphabet, or by arranging some other similar, safe wager. Candy Sam, another character of the later 1800 ' s, was a totally blind colored man who, in the days of paper currency, could feel the difference be- tween a fifty- and a five-cent note. He never forgave the Yale Conrant . . . for admitting to its columns a playful skit alleging his arrest for peeping into dormitory Avindows at night. There were others, but these are the men Avho were remembered longest. Academic Yale (J7 ' HE FIRST SCHOLARSHIP at Yale was founded in 1733 by Rev. George Berkeley, later Bishop of Cloyne. It was almost a century before another scholar- ship arrived on the scene, but after that time they were established in great num- bers. Applicants for admission to the fresh- man class were once far better grounded in the classics than they are today. The would-be freshman, less than fifty years ago, was expected to be examined on such subjects or books as the first three books of Xenophon ' s Anabasis, seven orations of Cicero, and the first twelve chapters (to the Passive Voice) of Arnold ' s Latin Prose Composition. On the graduate level, Yale was the first American university to confer the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. V ' 1 kX r v.. ■• i ' s V Ml ' - ' P 1 %v »■ • Wm W ' ' Bicentennial procession, featuring Theodore Roosevelt and Yale ' s President Hadley

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Hannibal Town and Gown i T ' AR MORE EXTRAVAGANT, and partic- ularly more regrettable, than any other chapter in Yale ' s history were the notorious Town and Gown mistuider- standings. The earliest official record of such trouble goes back to 1782, when a resi- dent of New Haven, a former graduate of the College, was subjected to indigni- ties under a pump by half a dozen un- dergraduates. The first real riot -tvas experienced in 1841, when a group of students playing football found themselves incapable of resisting the iwge of standing on a fire hose which lay across the held. The town ' s firemen, annoyed at the lack, of water, attempted to remove the students from their positions. Police c[uickly quelled the unrest, but that evening some of Yale ' s more adventurous stu- dents invaded the firehousc, cut the hose to bits, and created mild havoc. A Candy Sam settlement by the University prevented more repercussions from follo ' ing. In 1854, the most serious riot took place. A disturbance at the local theatre mushroomed into a mob scene, and when one Pat O ' Neill, a longshoreman, laid hold of a senior, John Sims, the lat- ter vas forced to draw a bowie knife and stab the tmlucky O ' Neill throtigh the heart. Yale ' s forces then ■iv ' ithdrew to re- main on the defensive, and thotigh one of the city ' s cannons was trained on the camptis, it failed to fire. Sims was subse- quently accjuitted by a jury. The last major riots on record are those which took place in 1919. It A as alleged that Yale men jeered soldiers re- turning to New Haven after World War I, and subsec]uent soap-box orations stirred the citizenry into a revengeful mood. After several days ' hostility, the disturbances subsided, and Town and Gown relationships have been as amica- ble as could be expected ever since.

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Some of Yale ' s fighting men posed jor this picture in 1916 Blount Avenue, about 1920. The present Commons is in the background