USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Andover > The sesquicentennial record : in commemoration of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass., May 18, 19, 1928 > Part 1
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ESQUICENTENNIAL RECORD
JUDGESAMUEL PHILLIPS
PHILLIPS
ACADEMY
2
1778 1928
ANDOVER
Andover Rm.
R
373 Phi
MASS.
Tru H walker
Giftof miss PROPERTY OF THE MEMORIAL HALL LIBRARY ANDOVER, MASS. Esther Sith
Anderen Revue 373 Pli
-
FOR REFERENCE Do not take from this room
DUCIT AMOR PATRIAE
M
EXLIBRIS
3 1330 00210 2766
THE SESQUICENTENNIAL RECORD
In commemoration of The One Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Founding of Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass.
May Eighteenth and Nineteenth, Nineteen Hundred Twenty-eight
A. PORTER THOMPSON, Chairman ALFRED OGDEN, Business Manager
ASSOCIATE EDITORS
1 .. R. CLARK
S. MeK. CROSBY
J. C. DINSMOOR
J. Q. NEWTON
J. A. REMICK
T. B. RHINES
F. C. SHROEDER
R. M. WALKER
T. WALKER
C. D. WEYERHAEUSER
Entered at the Post Office at Andover, Massachusetts as First-Class Mail Matter. Printed in the U. S. A., by the Andover Press, Andover, Massachusetts. Extra copies may be obtained from the Business Manager, The Sesquicentennial Record, Bartlet Hall, Andover, Massachusetts. Price one dollar.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
From the Gay Nineties, by Walter Prichard Eaton Vachel Rutisgrøt, by Ring Lardner 8
7
Andover in the Sometime Since, by E. S. Martin 9
Andover in the Early Seventies, by Charles Moore 37
A Horrible Example, by Edgar Rice Burroughs 13 New Hampshire and Phillips Academy, by Huntley N. Spaulding 38 The New Traprock Expeditions, by George S. Chappell 39
My Trip to the South Pole, Commander R. F. Byrd 15
A Word from Dr. Lewis Perry 17
Andover Elms, by John Gould Fletcher
19
Reminiscences of Andover in the Year 1892, by C. H. Moore 52
A Paper and a School, by Julian S. Mason 53
An Andover Dreamer, by Raymond Weeks 55
American Art Today and Tomorrow, by Robert Hallowell 57
H'hy? by George T. Eaton 57
Andover's Value to the Sons of the Rich or Great, by Archibald B. Roosevelt
2.4
.A Letter from the Labrador Doctor, by Sir Wilfred Grenfell 59
An Andover Hymn, by Henry H. Tweedy
25 In the Mamertime Prison, by Louis Untermeyer 59
25 The " Sea of Faces" by Grant -Mitchell
27 Petrarch the Humanist, by Nathan Haskel Dole
28 The Old School, by Boyd Edwards 62
29 Contrast, by A Member of the Class of 1915 63
30 The Flag, by Major General Henry G. Sharpe 6.
31 Andover in the Diplomatic Service, by Hon. Edwin Vernon Morgan 64
33 Retrospect, by Rev. Nehemiah Boynton 65
33 Some Recent Books of Importance, by William Lyon Phelps 66
34 Scholarship and Life, by David Kinley 07
Floreat Academia, by Charles H. Forbes
I Wish I Had Had, by James Hardy Ropes 35
Looking Backward - Facing Forward, by George H. Nettleton . 37
Words from our Friends 40,
41-51
War Memorials, by Montague J. Rendall
19
Editorial 20
He Came to Himself, by Ernest M. Hopkins
22
A Looking Backward Prophecy, by C. F. Thwing
23
Exploration, by William Beebe 58
A Bit Odd; but not so Very, by the Rev. Carroll Perry Canada Our Neighbor, by the Hon. William Phillips Highways of the dir, by Senator Hiram Bingham
Sixty Years Ago and Today, by the Rev. Frederic Palmer An Incident of the Great Wl'ar, by Elliott R. Thorpe
d Memory of T'ai Yuan-fu, by Samuel Merwin
Better Late Than Never, by W. Morton Fullerton
Andover in Indian Times, by Warren K. Moorehead
l'AGE
PHILLIPS - ANDOVER - ACADEMY
PH
IPS
EL
1 MVS
ARMIGER
1778
FORWARD
1928
37. Der.
TT was the purpose of the editors of this publication to assemble, not only a group of stories, poems, letters, and drawings about Andover, but also special articles character- istic of the work of Andover alumni in various fields.
It is only fitting in this place that the editors acknowl- edge the excellent cooperation which the contributors have given in sending material. The editors also wish to thank the following for their kind assistance and advice in the making of the book: Dr. Claude M. Fuess, Arthur W. Leonard, Allan V. Heely, Archibald Freeman, Professor Allen R. Benner, John H. Dye, Scott H. Paradise, Miss Sarah Frost, and the many others.
To James Cowan Sawyer
For Twenty-eight Dears Trustee and Treasurer of Phillips Academy, whose Interest and Friendship habe won him the Lobe and Esteem of Hosts of Andober Students
This Magazine is respectfully dedicated
MEMORIAL HALL LIBRARY Andover, Massachusetts 475-6960
JAMES C. SAWYER, '90 This Portrait was drawn especially for the SESQUICENTENNIAL RECORD by Raymond M. Crosby, '93.
Page Four
TRUSTEES OF PHILLIPS ACADEMY TREASURER'S OFFICE ANDOVER MASSACHUSETTS
J. C. SAWYER TREASURER
Editors of the Desquicentennial Record- you have done me great honor by this dedication and ? thank you sincerely. The friendliness which your act implies is very much appreciated and will be cherished.
9 congratulate you on this splendid publication which so adequately marks the day we are all celebrating. & glorious past is a fine inheritance and will be The inspiration for a new era of even greater accomplishment.
Sincerely yours James to Sawyer March 30. 19282
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ARITHMETIC
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ANDOVER 2078 A.D.
STATUES UNEARTHED DURING THE RECENT EXCAVATIONS ON THE SITE OF "AN OLD NEW ENGLAND SCHOOL" THE CHARACTER OF THESE EFFIGIES WOULD SUGGEST THAT THEY USED TO DECORATE THE CHAPEL
Page Six
From the Gay Nineties
BY WALTER PRICHARD EATON, '96
L OOKING back across the gulf of years, I see a skinny little fellow in what were then called short pants walking up the path to the old Academy building on School Street on a fine September morning. His face shone with eagerness and excitement. It was his first day at Andover. He was something like that obnoxious child in Tarkington's story who clamored for attention, because he, too, in his boyish egotism, had to tell somebody all about it. That somebody chanced to be a red-headed man named Stone, who was unfor- tunately walking up the path at the same time. But if Mr. Stone thought, as he probably did, "Here's a fresh one! Wait till he takes French!" he gave no sign of it, but smiled in kindly fashion. And presently the small newcomer found himself herded with others more or less like himself, in his first class. But there was one who didn't wear short pants. He not only wore long pants, but a mustache. He sat beside the little boy, and took a great shine to him, because, he said, the little boy reminded him of his own son back home! Fancy that, a man thirty-seven years old, married, with a family, at last saving enough money to keep his family for a time and then coming to Andover and entering with the smallest boys. Good old L-, he remained in school two or three years, and never led the class; indeed, I think it was harder for him to learn than it was for us youngsters - but always cheerful, always carrying himself in a trying position with enough dignity to protect him from ridicule, yet enough youthfulness to make us feel at home with him. And when it came to class meetings, we listened to his advice with uncon- scious deference. I don't suppose a man of that age is at all likely to enter Andover now. Public, night, and continuation schools have pretty well taken care of such unfortunates. But as far as Andover is concerned, that is rather a pity, because there was something deeply educational to a small boy to discover in the seat beside him a man of thirty-seven, and to realize the passion for knowledge which this represented. It added to his own respect for the educational process.
It added to his respect, too, to find boys at Andover living in little wooden tenements known as Latin and English Commons, where the room rent was, as I recall, nine dollars a year (and high at that), and earning their tuition and the three or four dollars a week necessary to pay for what Major Marland optimistically called food, by doing all sorts of menial tasks. Some collected and distributed laundry. Some took care of the rooms in the brick cottages or at least went through the motions. Some tended furnaces in private houses. And so on. These chaps were a world apart from the elegant creatures who lived in the fashionable boarding houses, who wore high collars and pointed shoes and read
"Town Topics" ostentatiously on the Saturday train to Boston, and were members of mysterious secret societies about which they couldn't possibly speak or they would never make "Bones" when they got to Yale. Year after year, to be sure, some of the boys who at Andover had peddled laundry and hung their slop pails out of the back windows of Latin Commons, made "Bones," and year after year most of the high- collared Fem-Sem-chasing, rich-papaed little sports disappeared into the undistinguished mass of collegians. But that is a lesson they never learned, and never will learn. There were some boys at the school, however, whose papas were neither rich nor poor, who looked about them at the sports and at the Commons crowd toiling hard and suffering what seemed ignominy for the sake of an education, and decided that as between the two wisdom and character were like to lie with the Commoners. That was a valuable lesson. It is a lesson that cannot be taught in a class room, that can only be taught in a democratic school which is rich in contrasts, and which gives opportunity and encourage- ment to the poor boy with ambition and energy. It is one of the things which has made Andover great. I am inclined to think it is one of the chief things.
The little boy we started with was witness during his four years of a curious phenomenon. The same year he entered Andover as pupil, a certain olive-skinned young man entered it as instructor, and began by teaching freshman English. He was a very young teacher, and we learned no English, partially because one never does learn any English in prep school English courses, and partially because his discipline was terrible. Four years later, when the boy was graduated, his class voted this teacher the best disciplinarian in the faculty, and during Senior year, while teaching Greek, Mr. Benner gave to most of the boys the best practice they had in English. The boy sat beneath the bust of Socrates, and between Bummy Booth and E. C. Carter (known always as Digamma Carter), and with the rest read the Odyssey at sight. He remembers those mornings more clearly and more pleasantly than any other feature of his life at Andover. He went to that class with unflagging zest, he actually looked forward to it with eagerness. A good story was going to be read, there was going to be the fun of getting the Greek into some sort of decent English, and if possible English which would carry a hint of the original vividness. The teacher had a kindly word for a brave effort, and a kindly smile for an amusing blunder. Nobody in class, except of course a few of the inevitable dumb bells, was bored. The hour went quickly and happily. We learned (temporarily) some Greek, a good deal of English,
(Continued on page 68)
Page Seven
" Macaronis, as we called them then - trousers ran amuck and caused as much reeling, foundering, and falling as does our modern gin."
Vachel Rutisgrwt
A NOVEL By RING LARDNER
Il'riter; father of two Andover undergraduates
PROLOGUE
G O back with me a hundred odd years, to the close of the first half century of Andover's existence. The well-groomed undergraduate of today, subscriber to the elegant custom of doing without garters and allowing highly tinctorial hosiery to conceal the unpolished grandeur of his shoes, will doubtless smile in derision when I tell him that the dandies of that period (mac- aronis, we called them then) made it a practice never to wear belt or suspenders, and their trousers, insecurely bound to their ankles by bicycle clips, ran amuck along the sidewalks and caused as much reeling, floundering, and falling as does our modern gin.
Go back with me to the time when Exeter was a girls' school, known as Phyllis' Academy for Females, a rival of Wellesley and Vassar and the Smith Brothers' College at Northampton, when Exeter came to Andover not as opponents in baseball, football or track, but as partners in the dance; go back with me to one night in particular, the night on which my story opens, the night on which I pressed between the pages of my copy of "The President's Daughter" a spray of fungus growth that had dropped from the gleaming shoulder of my Cynthia, my dream girl of a century since.
CHAPTER I
It was Junior Prom night at Andover, and the corri- dors of the massive Hotel Pennsylvania were thronged
with bewhiskered, suspenderless sons of old P. A. and resplendent, whiskerless daughters of young P. E.
Everyone seemed to be talking at once and all pro- nouncing one name - Vachel Rutisgrwt - and quite a chore to pronounce it, said one wit. (Editor's note: Does that qualify him as a wit?)
"Where is Vachel Rutisgrwt?" said a sub-primary Andoverite, his scholastic inferiority proclaimed by the fact that his trousers swept a very small area of sidewalk.
"And where is Vachel Rutisgrwt?" cried a fair Exeter senior, whose dentist had evidently reached California first and collected a plethora of nuggets.
And who, says the author, was Vachel Rutisgrwt? Just Andover's star athlete for that season - No. 5 on the polo chukker, third base coach on the baseball nine, tackling dummy on the football team, and cork- screw on the eight; a man so far superior to the present readers, and author, that it is a sad commentary on present day humanity that he is not both writing and reading this lethargy.
CHAPTER 2
The evening wore along until it was about eleven o'clock by Andover clocks and time hourly furnished by the American Telegraph Company. Everybody was still looking for Vachel Rutisgrwt. The orchestra of fourteen pieces, all clarinet repair men, had long since
(Continued on page (S)
Page Fight
Andover in the Some-Time-Since
BY EDWARD S. MARTIN, '72 Author; Writer of Editorials in "Life" and " Harper's" WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY F. G. COOPER
I CAME to Andover in the Spring of 1870. The new phase of education began for me as soon as I got on the train heading East from Auburn. My brother and the two Beardsley boys who were my guides and com- panions on the train taught me between Auburn and Syracuse to play casino. In my mother's household there never had been card playing except on special occasions for the entertainment of visitors, but when I got to Andover I came with a new accomplishment, casino.
Phillips Academy at that time was considerably more Puritan than the household I had grown up in, and was doubtless passing through the same process of modifica- tion of Puritan austerities. The theories of conduct had not changed much since much earlier times, but in practice matters had become somewhat alleviated and were doubtless easing up. I was fourteen years old when I went there and well fitted for the junior class by home teaching by tutors. Boys of that age see only the externals of school management. Uncle Sam Taylor, universally known as Unc, was a formidable and con- siderably fabulous figure. He was a strong believer in authority, which had more vogue in schools half a century ago than it seems to have at present. I got my early idea of him from my brother in the class ahead of me who had been subjected to his admonitions. He had described to me the charges of frivolity and general worthlessness that Uncle Sam had assailed him with in private interviews; how he had accused him of bad associates; of his intimacy with X and Y and Z, and in turn, when he admonished X, Y and Z accused them of pernicious association with him. Nothing much ailed my brother except that he was a cheerful spirit and had no uncontrollable thirst for book knowledge. The truth is Uncle Sam to the schoolboy mind was an ogre,
reputed to be very fast on his feet in chasing boys who got out into the landscape, especially in the dark, in defiance of regulations. The rules held that every boy should be in his room at night unless he had a valid excuse for being out of it. If he was at a prayer meeting or at Philo or otherwise improving himself spiritually or mentally by permitted association, that was lawful, but the pursuit of pleasure after dark was never lawful,
especially if it led into Pike's oyster saloon, which was frequented by adventurous spirits who felt the need of regaling themselves with oyster stews at lawful or unlawful times.
There were restraints in those days, but after all there was plenty of legitimate fun. In the Spring there was lots of baseball; in the Fall there was a primitive football, played with a rubber ball, by all the boys that came out; in the Winter there was skating and hockey on a pond somewhere up beyond the Theological Seminary, and it seems to me that coasting on double runners down School Street was sometimes allowed. We certainly had coasting. There wasn't any lack of wholesome sports even sixty years ago.
When we think of the past, we see it in pictures that for some reason often quite disconnected from their importance, have stayed in the mind. In my mind there is a picture of a boy with a large green necktie who played right field on our class nine. Right field on the ball field of those days was down hill and that boy's head, shoulders and necktie appeared above the hill and that was all of him that was visible. The right fielder took his place as far down the hill as he could get without losing sight of the batter. That boy with the green necktie was my classmate Charles Sumner Bird, afterward my classmate in the class of '77 in Harvard College, a strong and lively character who dwelt in the English Commons and lived to be one of the notable manufacturers and politicians of Massachusetts.
Another picture I have is of George Taylor sitting up inside the fence in the garden of his house watching the ball games. He had half of the double house just above what was then the site of the Academy building. His father, Uncle Sam, had the other half of it.
Our relations with teachers in those days were not intimate. George Taylor, however, was not at all a terrorist. I think he was a good teacher, anyhow my relations with him were always agreeable. He taught the first division of the middle class. The second division was taught by Hawkes, known as Billy Hawkes, a gentleman, but one whose temper was liable to dis- turbance in class by the pupils.
Another picture I have is of a lively boy with light curly hair, abundantly articulate, a good baseball player, captain of our class nine, as I remember more or less disorderly, inattentive to raiment, but a good scholar and a competent debater. That boy was William Henry Moody, from Danvers, afterwards Secretary of the Navy under Roosevelt and finally on the bench of the United States Supreme Court.
Another eminent character in our class was Robert J. Cook, from Cookstown, Pa., who came to be the
Page Nine
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THE OLD MANSION HOUSE, THE SITE OF THE PRESENT CHURCHILL HOUSE "- a really delightful house of entertainment."
famous Yale oarsman and coach. He was older than most of us, perhaps nineteen or twenty, physically very able and mentally able too in his way; a strong willed fellow, a good fighter, a leader in the class, but not much in favor with the class above us who perhaps saw in him a degree of vigor not suitable in a junior, and also complained of his manners and that he wore ungentle- manly shoestring neckties. All these criticisms, how- ever, Cook survived and duly got to Yale and to a career as college oarsman and coach.
Still another classmate was Victor Lawson of Chicago, like Cook, several years older than the majority of us, and on his way to be a famous and successful news- paper-publisher in Chicago. He was much more mature in thought and accomplishments than most of us and came to Andover, at 19, for a little more formal education before he went to work. He was of Scandin- avian origin and his father had been, and may have been at that time, the editor of the paper called The Scandi- navian. He was aware of the existence of Thomas Carlisle and could talk about him. I used to see him at Mrs. Tenney's boarding house where I lived, and was concerned with him, strange to say, in the enterprise of introducing cushions into our seats in the chapel of the Seminary where we went to church. Discourses in that chapel intended for the theologs were liable to be pro- tracted and Lawson was of a sufficient maturity to realize that sitting on a bare board seat for an hour or more listening may be to the outpourings of Josephus Flavius Cook was a condition that needed to be ameli- orated. So he got together some money, had some cushions made somewhere and he and I and probably others put them into the chapel through the window at night, arranged them on our seats and got away un- detected. This insubordination was apparently con- doned, for the cushions stayed where we left them.
Lawson got rich as a newspaper publisher in Chicago where his papers always maintained a high character and standing. In his will he left large bequests to charitable and religious uses, one especially to the Chicago Theological Seminary. A diary that he kept at Andover has been found. Being 20 years old, and a responsible young man, he was naturally impatient of the somewhat antiquated rules of the school which he considered quite absurd and paid rather scant attention to. He speaks of being implicated in a New Year bon- fire which was stopped, much to his indignation, by the school police consisting of Uncle Sam and other teachers just before it was lighted. He was also one of a party
that went with some girls on a sleigh ride to a supper at Lowell. There was nothing wrong about it, but it was a heinous offence against the rules of the school and all the boys concerned were suspended. Lawson took his medicine with the rest but with much inward remon- strance.
Our daily habit as I recall it was to walk downtown in the middle of the day. There were several objectives in the village, the post office, Draper's book store, and Chandler's where we could buy newspapers, fruit, cakes, candy and such things and could get them on tick if our credit was good.
For longer walks there was the Shawsheen River more or less famed in story and in the verses, not always decorous, of the mock programs which were a regular
Page Ten
feature of the commencement exercises in the hall at the top of the Academy building. They had to be smuggled in and passed about in spite of the vigilance of the authorities, but it was done.
Sometimes when there was a good moral show in the village we went to it, - musical shows, as a rule, pre- ferred. I remember the delight of seeing and hearing Barnabee sing "The Wooden Leg" and the rapture of hearing "I saw Esau kissing Kate" sung by the Harvard Glee Club. When I read that the present Harvard Glee Club has abandoned all such ditties in its concerts and under a highly qualified director does well with real music, I feel that in some particulars the world has gone backwards.
The most eventful day in the school in my time was that day in the winter of 1871 in which Uncle Sam on his way to Biblical on Sunday morning suddenly col- lapsed at the door of the Academy building and expired almost immediately. That, of course, was a very stunning occurrence. To the school it was like the end of the world; highly dramatic and abounding in con- sequences. The boys, however, survived the day, and with darkness came a new sensation, the violent clang- ing of fire bells on the atmosphere of mourning, the appearance of Deacon Chandler and the school engine drawn or followed by the entire school down the hill to a big fire in Ballardvale. The school engine of those days
was one with hand brakes. It did good service at fires, its usefulness being not unfavorably affect- ed by its service in providing enter- tainment for the boys, nor yet by
the custom of leaving it standing after a fire in front of the main building of the Fem. Sem. When the woods got afire sometimes it went out, but this Ballard- vale fire had a good deal more ginger in it than fires in the woods and of course acted as a thrilling outlet for the suppressed emotions of that eventful day.
One picture of that fire has survived the years, -- Alec Irwin a husky youth, at the top of a ladder, hold- ing the hose pipe, squirting water into the burning factory. Alec Irwin came from Pittsburgh and played second base on the school nine and was a cousin of Alec Nevin also from Pittsburgh, and also a prominent player on the nine and a beautiful figure of youth. Nevin had graduated with the class of 1870 and gone to Yale. Pennsylvania, including the Pittsburgh district, was an important contributor to our school in the seventies. In my class the Pittsburghers were McCord and William N. Frew, the latter in his later years known by his connection with some of the Carnegie endowments. From Reading came Livingood, Nickel from Connellsville, from Philadelphia, Shannon, and Cook, as said, from Cookstown.
Of Dr. Taylor my impressions were merely those of a young boy who took in what he heard. To us, as I have said, the master of the school was considerably an ogre, but my class never came under his personal instruction, and that I regret, for he might have made something even of me. He was Scotch-Irish by descent, from Londonderry, New Hampshire. That accounts for a good deal of the impression he made on the boys, but anyone who really wants to know about him can get full information out of the funeral sermon preached about him by Professor Park, his next-door neighbor, highly gifted in discourse, who knew him long and intimately and greatly liked and honored him. He was Principal at Phillips Academy for 33 years and was only 64 when he died. Among grown people who really knew him, he ranked very high indeed both as a man and a school-master, and as a classical scholar and a teacher he won a great reputation.
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