The history of Colby College, Part 28

Author: Colby College
Publication date: 1963
Publisher: Waterville, Colby College Press
Number of Pages: 716

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The Boardman Missionary Society, one of the oldest of Colby organizations, had been merged with the YMCA soon after Robins became President. It boasted fifty-five members in 1878, twenty-five of them in the freshman class alone.

The Literary Fraternity, oldest of the social societies, though nearly ready to give up the ghost, was still operating, with its membership about equally di- vided between Dekes, Zetes and Independents. Its old rival, the Erosophian Adelphi, had already dissolved. The reading room, previously conducted jointly by the two societies, now had a separate organization called the Athenaeum. In that room, in 1878, the students had access to eleven daily papers, including three from Boston, three from Portland, the New York Graphic, the Springfield Re- publican, the Lewiston Journal, the Bangor Whig and Courier, and the Kennebec Journal. Thirty-two weekly papers reached the reading room tables. Among the better known magazines were Harper's Weekly, Littel's Living Age, the Scien- tific American, the London News, Zion's Advocate, the Watchman, and Frank Leslie's Weekly. Once-a-week newspapers came from all parts of Maine-from Camden, Rockland and Ellsworth; from Auburn and South Paris; from Houlton and Machias; from Skowhegan and Fairfield; and of course there was the local weekly, the Waterville Mail. Of the monthly magazines, most prominent were Harper's, Scribner's, and the Atlantic Monthly. Indeed the Colby student in Robins' time could not complain for lack of current reading matter.

Military drill, an outcome of the Civil War, had not lost its popularity in 1878, and under the command of Captain W. H. Mathews the Colby Rifles showed a roll of 87 men. Under such officers as Will Lyford and Arthur Thomas

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were such private troopers as the future Baptist clergymen, E. C. Whittemore, C. E. Owen, and George Merriam.

The Baseball Association was under the presidency of Willis Joy, while W. S. Bosworth was captain and pitcher of the University nine. Will Lyford captained the second team, and each class also had a nine, as did both the Dekes and the Zetes. George Merriam, for many years the beloved pastor of the Bethany Baptist Church at Skowhegan, was captain and catcher on his class team.

There was a University orchestra, a college choir, a quartet, and a glee club, also a chess club of sorts, which the Oracle derided by naming all six of its mem- bers president, and adding "Lay members-all but me."

Physical activities in general were in charge of a Gymnasium Association, headed by Will Lyford, but at last the students were receiving some help from the employment of two part-time physicians, Dr. Atwood Crosby and Dr. Fred Wilson.

The Oracle took a 'dig' at the women students by giving them a page under the heading Femi-Nine, and naming nine girls to a baseball team. The favored misses were Emily Meader, Minnie Mathews, Susan Denison, Hattie Britton, Jen- nie Smith, Lizzie Mathews, Kate Norcross, Lizzie Grimes, and Sophia Hanson.

Baseball was very much in the editors' minds, for they proceeded to set up a fictitious faculty team, with Janitor Sam Osborne as captain and catcher, "Cosine" Warren in the box, Moses Lyford on first base, President Robins on second, "Johnny" Foster on third, "Sam" Smith at short stop, and out in the field "Judy" Taylor, "Eddie" Hall, and "Billy" Elder. Beneath the list of the team was appended the note: "Uniforms ---- theological cap, philosophical shirt, and intellectual belt."

The Oracle had a lot of fun with the DKE Dining Club, listing for each member his eating capacity, on a scale from 1 to 5, or from Excellent to De- ficient. All was captioned by a quotation from Shakespeare: "I have heard that Julius Caesar grew fat from feasting there."

In those days before the introduction of the cigarette, if a student wanted to be a bit sporty he smoked a cigar. If, however, he was a real smoker, as some indeed were, he had a pipe. But in 1878, any smoking at the College, though not prohibited, was so frowned upon that the Oracle published a list which it called "Disciples of the Weed," appending explanatory notes to some of the names. Hugh Chaplin found it "hard to learn." Joy "reforms occasionally," King was called a "periodical smoker," and Tilden indulged "in his closet."

Card playing, long under the ban, was considered safe enough to discuss on the campus in 1878. So the Oracle had also a list of "Pasteboard Manipula- tors," dividing them into experts at high-low-jack, whist and euchre.

Concerning the gradual introduction of new methods of instruction under President Robins, Albion Woodbury Small pointed out that it was the opening of Coburn Hall, with its new facilities, that enabled Professor Elder to break with the old method of memorizing the textbook. "For the first time within the knowledge of that student generation, actual chemical experiments were performed in the presence of the class. To most students that was a delivery from bondage, but Professor Elder's experiments did not meet with unanimous faculty approval. One of his colleagues was heard to remark, "Things have come to such a pass that messing with a little dirty water in a bottle passes for education."5

By the students of that time who later achieved prominence it was generally agreed that the faculty compared in scholarship favorably with other New Eng-

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land colleges. Yet, to those competent to judge, such as Albion Woodbury Small, Shailer Mathews, and Nathaniel Butler, Jr., the isolation of a small faculty in a college remote from the university centers caused a narrowing of outlook and a strong conservatism. These worthy and devoted men lacked one important stimulus to scholarly growth: exchange of ideas with other scholars in special fields of knowledge. A man like Charles Hamlin would correspond with Agassiz and Huxley, and would rush off to Cambridge at short notice, but he was a rare exception. On one occasion Dr. Robins, who was far ahead of his faculty in his academic thinking, remarked to a friend, "They are devoted men, conscientiously serving ideals which have ceased to be timely."

Anyone who has become familiar with the history of higher education in the United States knows that Colby was not exceptional in succumbing to a kind of educational stagnation in the 1870's. At some time during the nineteenth century almost every other American college went through a similar period of arrested development. It is true that Colby was one of the later colleges to experience the much needed educational renaissance. A faculty of sincere conservatives at Colby set themselves against change which they believed to be destructive rather than constructive.

To understand what went on within the College during the Robins admin- istration one must take cognizance of Dr. Robins' fundamental philosophy of higher education. It is preserved for us in a booklet written by him and pub- lished by the American Baptist Publication Society under the rather lengthy title, "The Christian Idea of Education as Distinguished from the Secular Idea of Edu- cation."6 In that pamphlet Dr. Robins pulled no punches. He insisted that genuine education must begin with religious conversion in the strict Calvinist sense, and that it must proceed as constructive reconstruction of character. The difference between Robins and his faculty colleagues like Samuel K. Smith and John B. Foster was not that they disagreed theologically. They were all staunch Baptists with Calvinist convictions. The difference lay in the fact that what the professors believed academically, Robins believed evangelically. He proposed to do at Colby what Dwight L. Moody was doing at Northfield. For nine years, amid the constant distractions that beset any college president, Henry Robins ap- plied his dynamic energy to one unified task-that of achieving a compatible marriage between his religious conception of education and his respect for intel- lectual honesty and academic achievement.

There is no question that Henry Robins brought a new spirit to the Colby campus. The issue was whether that new spirit should prevail. Whatever the President's religious attachment to the educational process, would his progressive academic notions be acceptable in this ultra-conservative college? Would the faculty accept elective courses? Would there be room for the chemical ex- periments of a William Elder? Robins had no sympathy with the prevailing notion that the purpose of a college education is to shape student minds by uniform methods to fit a stabilized life. Life was not static and fixed, but flexible and changing, and the old uniform pattern, insisted Robins, fitted men poorly for post-war America of the 1870's.

Few men were in a better position to assess the results of Dr. Robins' work than was Albion Woodbury Small, who had first been a student during the Robins administration and thirteen years after graduation had himself occupied the presi- dent's chair. Long afterward Dr. Small wrote:

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This change of spirit, this revolution of which at the time few were aware, permeated the whole college. A stimulus was felt in every classroom. Other teachers besides Dr. Robins became able to make students feel that the concern was to help students solve their own problems rather than to demand their acceptance of ideas on the authority of text- book and instructor. When Dr. Robins left Colby he seriously sus- pected that his nine years of consecration had been in vain. The essen- tial test was whether Colby had become a college in which candid pursuit of reality was stimulated and controlled by aggressive Christian purpose. On this point none of Dr. Robins' successors in the presidency was ever uncertain. The spirit which he struggled to establish has ever since been the paramount force. In the same sense in which it is true that Dr. Champlin saved the physical life of the College, Dr. Robins saved its soul.7

Clement H. Hallowell, 1875, had some interesting recollections.

In 1875 my sister, Susan Hallowell, newly appointed Professor of Botany at Wellesley College, visited Colby, and I took her on a round of in- spection of our college equipment. Meeting Professor Elder, I intro- duced them, and he invited her to visit the chemistry class, of which I was a member. When the hour arrived, I escorted my sister to the platform and took my usual seat. The five minute tolling of the bell started and finally ceased, but no class appeared. Professor Elder sud- denly accosted me, 'Do you know anything about this absence of the class, Hallowell?' I pleaded complete ignorance, and the irate professor strode off in search of the President. Things happened rapidly the next day. I found myself the only junior in college. Everyone else in the class had been suspended. Now I had to face chemistry, calculus and Greek alone. To make matters worse, some evil-disposed party had entered my room and abstracted my very excellent Greek 'pony'.8

On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of his class a member of the Class of 1879 gave some other pertinent recollections of Colby in the 1870's.º

We had no Woodman Stadium, not even bleachers, but the student body from the side lines watched with unbounded enthusiasm a selected few take ample exercise for the whole college. We had no football team, but we had baseball played without gloves or masks. We had a so- called gymnasium. In 1868 the Trustees appropriated $1200 to build it. The structure burned down before we were half way through college, and the present gymnasium did not materialize until after we had gradu- ated.

China Lake water was not available in those days, but the Kennebec River was just where it is now, and we had a well, the pump of which was much used during the 'ducking' season. We had no bathrooms nor bath tubs. Our toilet equipment consisted of a central plant con- veniently located on the back campus. It was a substantial stone build- ing known as Memorial Hall Junior, so called because constructed of the same material as Memorial Hall. It was a never-to-be-forgotten sight to see the iron roof of that building cavorting over the lower campus -the result of a Fourth of July explosion.

In our time a beginning had been made in improving the heating of the dormitories. The students in North College reveled in the luxury of

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steam heat-that is, when it worked. But we in South College had no central heating at all-only open coal grates that gave excellent ventila- tion but little heat. For light we burned the fabled midnight oil.

As for the faculty, we had never heard of associate and assistant pro- fessors. Every professor was a full professor and the head of a depart- ment. Every student knew intimately every professor, for we all pursued the straight and narrow course prescribed by the catalogue.

In 1959 there was still living one man who had attended Colby under President Robins. He was Robie Frye, who had entered the College from Bel- fast in 1878 and had received his degree in 1882. After graduation, Frye joined his father in the United States Customs Service, with which he continued for more than half a century. He was an important official of the Boston Customs House, and on our entrance into World War I he had a prominent part in the seizure of German ships in Boston Harbor.

The writer of this history is deeply indebted to Robie Frye, with whom he has carried on lengthy correspondence and conducted numerous conversa- tions for many years. Opportunities for these conversations were afforded each June, for unless Frye was out of the country at the time, he never missed a Colby Commencement. The assembled alumni gave him a rousing ovation on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of his graduation in 1957. In the previous December this spry, neatly dressed gentleman, whose mind was as alert and whose memory was as accurate as a man of middle age, had celebrated his 96th birthday. His letters are delightful reading, not only because of their content, but also because the neat, precise handwriting is so unusual in a person of advanced age.

Mr. Frye had vivid recollections of some of the physical objects which once graced the Colby campus but which had disappeared before the dawn of the twentieth century. The college pump, to which several references have already been made in this book, was situated close to the college walk and just beyond the north end of South College. It was much nearer that building than it was to Champlin Hall, although it was between the two. Memorial Hall Junior, the single college latrine of Frye's day, was not on the exact site of later Hedman Hall, according to Frye's recollection, but was a bit farther down the slope toward the river, about a hundred yards back from the walk, which would place it just behind Hedman Hall. Frye insists that what Small, Smiley and others referred to as "Memorial Hall Junior" was a longer name than the Class of 1882 recog- nized. "I never heard it called anything but simply 'Junior'. It was the only latrine."

Mr. Frye agrees with others who have written about the Robins period that baseball was the only organized sport. He said, "There was no football, no basketball, no tennis, no golf, no winter sports. We did have a field day in the spring, at which there were such events as foot races, broad and high jump, three-legged race, and potato race. We swam in the Messalonskee, and a few of us kept boats on that stream."

For social life, Mr. Frye says the students of his time had to be content with what were called "sociables," held at the Baptist vestry. There was no danc- ing -- round, square, or any other kind under that Baptist roof, but occasionally a small dance was held by some daring host and hostess in the community. At- tendance by male students at a public dance was against regulations, and for the few women enrolled in the College it was unthinkable.

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A favorite downtown meeting place was Dorr's Drug Store. It was located in the Phoenix Block, the first large building erected on Waterville's Main Street. Built by Timothy Boutelle in 1845, on the west side of the street just below the junction with Temple Street, it had housed a drug store since its opening day. In Frye's time the proprietor was George Dorr, a man very popular with the stu- dents. The forerunner of what later students knew as Buzzell's Restaurant was Williams' Oyster House, where one could get a big bowl of stew for a quarter.

Throughout the last quarter of the nineteenth century and well into the first quarter of the twentieth, a rousing campus song was "Phi Chi." It was sung by all students and memorized at once by every freshman when this writer en- tered Colby in 1909. It was a song of a social organization with somewhat ques- tionable reputation that invaded the Eastern colleges in the 1870's. One of its refrains, "Luck beats pluck, and Prexy's stuck, and the profs are high and dry," didn't meet with complete faculty approval. Here is Robie Frye's recollection of Phi Chi at Colby.

The first time I heard of Phi Chi was when President Robins came into Professor Warren's class in mathematics and told us about it. He said that a very evil hazing society had sprung up at Bowdoin and was trying to get a foothold at Colby. Dr. Robins said he was going to stamp it out. He then read a statement which he asked every student to sign, giving assurance that the student was not a member of Phi Chi and promised to have no dealings with it. We sat in alphabetical order and were called up in that order to sign the statement. We were surprised and perplexed when Edward Collins was not called and remained in his seat. We learned afterwards that he and his brother Will at Bowdoin were both members of Phi Chi and that it was through them that Phi Chi was introduced into Colby. When my name was called, I asked to be excused, saying I saw no sense in signing such a promise when I had never before heard of Phi Chi. Very wisely Dr. Robins did not insist. He said, 'Frye, you will come to my office at four o'clock this afternoon.' I was there on the dot. I attempted to argue the point, but I came, I saw, I signed. The organization soon died out, but the song lived on.

'Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah for old Phi Chi! Hurrah! hurrah! O may she never die. For luck beats pluck, and Prexy's stuck, And the profs are high and dry. We will follow her to glory.'

When Robie Frye was in college, the cost of attendance had increased con- siderably over the $24 a year tuition and the dollar a week board of Jeremiah Chaplin's time. Tuition had risen to $45, board to $2.50 a week, and room rent to $12 a year. Frye says that, when board went up to $2.75 in his senior year, there were strong protests. Frye's total college expenses for four years were less than $1000. Among college expenses in Frye's time were $15 a year for fuel, $2.50 for light, and $12 for washing. Rooms were not furnished by the College, but there was an active market in second hand furniture, and a student could get bed, mattress, table and chair for $10 to $15. In a later day many a gullible freshman was hoaxed into paying some persuasive upperclassman for the radiator in his room.

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Like so many young men of the time, Robie Frye began a diary when he entered college in the fall of 1878. He gave it up before the end of that fresh- man year, but while it lasted it contained some items that reveal not what one remembered years afterward, but how events were recorded by an impressionable freshman when these events occurred.

August 28, 1878. Arrived by morning train10 and looked around for a boarding place. Crawford and Stone, who had come over the day before, were boarding at Mrs. Fields' on Main Street. After visiting several places I decided to take a room at Mrs. Fields'. Frank Wood- cock rooms with me. We pay $3.50 a week for board and room, in- cluding lights and washing of bed clothes.

That first item in the Frye diary calls for several observations. First, note the early date of the term's opening-August 29, for college opened on the day after Frye's arrival. Then note that Frye, as well as other students, had to seek a room in town, outside the dormitories. That is a tribute to President Robins' success in so increasing enrollment that the dormitories could not accommodate the influx.

August 29. Went to prayers at nine and to Prof. Foster in Greek at 11:30. Unpacked my trunk, bought a lamp and shade, some kerosene and a can.

September 1. We all went to the Baptist church. I did not like the minister very well. Saw Dr. Robins' wife. Went over to the railroad bridge to see the falls. Some Freshies got ducked. The sophs and juniors gave Dr. Robins a horn serenade.

September 6. This evening Miss W. and Miss T. came to our room to get us to write in their autograph albums. They caught Will Craw- ford in our room in his nightshirt. He hustled into the closet, where he had to stand on bare feet on the edge of the woodbox trying to hold the door shut with his finger nails. We kept him there for half an hour, nearly suffocating him.

September 8. Mr. Bellows, the Unitarian minister called at our room. He was the only minister who had paid any attention to us.

September 30. While I was in chapel reading Irving's Tales of a Traveler, the fire alarm rang and there was a great racket. It was Dr. Robins' house. Not much damage.

October 1. Initiated into Zeta Psi. Hannibal Hamlin was impressive explaining the aims and ideals of the society.

October 3. Professor Taylor has been sick for several days and we got some cuts out of it.11

October 4. Baseball match between freshmen and sophs won by the sophs 28 to 2.

October 5. The Kennebec is quite a river, but not up to the Penobscot. Wish I roomed in the Bricks.

October 10. Koopman, a junior, and I went down to the river to read poetry. He is a poet. I think the best thing in college is when the boys get out in front of South College and sing. "Bangor" and Phil sing tenor.12

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October 12. The faculty sits in a row on the platform in chapel and are very dignified. Professor Taylor looks at a knot hole in the floor and never looks up.

In spite of his many interesting reminiscences, Robie Frye was no worshiper of the past. Colby's golden age was not in his student days, but always in the future, even after the new plant had arisen on Mayflower Hill. In 1957 Mr. Frye wrote to this historian:

I am not one who harks back to the 'good old days' and thinks that everything has now gone to pot. Perhaps I fool myself, but I take pride in thinking that I keep up with the times and am interested in the present and the immediate future. On the whole I think the world is growing better. Yet I cannot fail to remember when moderation and temperance, in the larger sense, were the general rule, when thrift was a virtue, when government depended upon the people, not the people upon the gov- ernment, when everyone expected to work, when entertainment was mostly homemade, when family life at home was the basis of society, and when a dollar was worth more than fifty cents. Of course all this labels me as an old fogy.

CHAPTER XXII

Pepper And Salt

A LL who knew him agreed that George Dana Boardman Pepper was the salt of the earth. He seemed to his contemporaries to be the very embodi- ment of Christianity. Even that stormy petrel of the Waterville Baptist Church, the shirt maker Charles Hathaway, found it difficult to quarrel with Pepper, when as a young man the latter was pastor of the church. Tall and lean, with closely cropped beard, Dr. Pepper in his later years bore striking resemblance to his contemporary, Abraham Lincoln. Indeed, the resemblance was more than physical. Deep convictions, warm human sympathy, a becoming humility tem- pered by vigorous action and an unfailing sense of humor were characteristics of George Pepper, as they were of the martyred President. But Pepper had none of the melancholy that was Lincoln's life-long affliction. Like all men, Dr. Pep- per knew sorrow and trouble, but he was sustained by a persistent faith, which assured him that "God's in His heaven, all's right with the world." Moreover, with all his Christian sympathy, compelling him constantly to play the Good Samaritan among his fellow men, Dr. Pepper was no gullible prey to charlatans. He possessed that rare combination, a hard head and a kind heart.

The Trustees of Colby University wasted no time in electing a successor to Henry Robins when illness compelled his resignation in 1882. At a special meeting held in Portland on March 27, they chose George Dana Boardman Pepper as the institution's eighth president. Pepper was not only the unanimous choice of the Board, but also was the man whom the faculty desired as their new leader. At a meeting on February 18 the faculty voted to request the Trus- tees to elect Dr. Pepper, to whom they sent a letter strongly urging him to accept the position, if it should be offered.

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The history of Colby College, Part 28

Author: Colby College Publication date: 1963 Publisher: Waterville, Colby College Press Number of Pages: 716

Author: Colby College
Publication date: 1963
Publisher: Waterville, Colby College Press
Number of Pages: 716