From one who belonged in a remote antiquity to the fraternity of college editors, a contribution to this centennial number[1] has been solicited. Perhaps I can do no better than to recall a few impressions of my own life in college. Every year, at the banquet, I observe that I am pushed a little nearer to the border where the almond tree flourishes, and I shall soon have a right to be reminiscent and garrulous. At the next centennial I shall not be called on; this is my last chance.

I came to college in the fall of 1856. My class had been in college for a year, so that the vicissitudes of a freshman are no part of my memory. I shall never forget that evening when I first entered Williamstown, riding on the top of the North Adams stage. The September rains had been abundant, and the meadows and slopes were at their greenest; the atmosphere was as nearly transparent as we are apt to see it; the sun was just sinking behind the Taconics, and the shadows were creeping up the eastern slopes of Williams and Prospect; as we paused on the little hill beyond Blackinton the outline of the Saddle was defined against a sky as rich and deep as ever looked down at sunset on Naples or Palermo. I thought then that I had never seen a lovelier valley, and I have had no occasion to revise that judgment. To a boy who had seen few mountains that hour was a revelation. On the side of the picturesque, the old way of transportation was better than the new. The boy who is dumped with his trunks at the station near the factory on the flat gets no such abundant entrance into Williamstown as was vouchsafed to the boy who rode in triumphantly on the top of Jim Bridges' stage.

The wide old street was as hospitable then as now; if the elms were something less paternal in their benediction their stature was fair and their shade was ample; but the aspect of the street—how greatly changed since then! There were two or three fine old colonial houses, which are standing now and are not likely to be improved upon; but most of the dwellings were of the orthodox New England village pattern, built, I suppose, to square with the theology of the Shorter Catechism, or perhaps with the measurements of the New Jerusalem, the length and breadth and height of which are equal. The front yards were all enclosed with fences, none of which were useful and few of which were ornamental. The broad-shouldered old white Congregational meeting-house stood at the top of the street in Field Park; it was the goal of restless Sophomores for several hours every Sunday, and it was also the goal of all ambitious contestants for college honors. Griffin Hall was then chapel, museum, laboratories, and recitation-rooms; East, South, and West Colleges, with Kellogg Hall, on the West lawn,—"factories of the muses," in Lowell's expressive phrase,—stood forth in their naked practicality much as they stand to-day. Lawrence Hall library, in its earlier, wingless character of colossal ink-pot, Jackson Hall[2] and the little magnetic observatory, still standing, completed the catalogue of the college buildings.

The faculty of that day can be recalled without difficulty: President Hopkins, whose clear and venerable name no eulogy of mine shall here disfigure; his stern-faced but great-hearted brother Albert; Emmons the geologist; Griffin, Tatlock, Lincoln, and Chadbourne, who succeeded Hopkins in the presidency; Bascom, the only survivor to-day, and Perry, the best-known of them all. I have taken no pains to refresh my memory of the faculty of 1856, but I am confident that here are no omissions. It will be somewhat less easy for undergraduates to-day, writing so many eventful years after their entrance, to recall the names of their teachers. One only of our memorable nine is now in service, and long may he serve the community! All these were ranked as professors; there had been tutors and instructors before our days, but none in our time.

The Gul of those days was a four-page sheet containing in briefest form the membership and official lists of the various fraternities and associations; it sold for ten cents a copy. The only other college publication was the Quarterly, a solid magazine of about one hundred pages. None of the fraternities then existing, I think, possessed a chapter-house; their rooms were in more or less obscure quarters, over stores or in private houses. There was quite as much rivalry between them then as now, and poorer spirit. There was also an Anti-Secret Confederation, of which General Garfield in his time was the leader; it mixed freely in college politics and was no less clannish than the other fraternities. The absence of chapter-houses and the less fully developed social life of the fraternities left room for a stronger class feeling and perhaps a more sympathetic college spirit than exists to-day. The smallness of the classes and the absence of the electives, too, aided the cultivation of class feeling; the classes ranged from forty-five to sixty, and the whole class was held solidly together during the whole course, all reciting in the same room three times a day from the beginning of freshman year to the end of senior.

College singing was hearty and spirited, but our repertoire was limited. I recall many evenings of blameless hilarity on the benches under the trees in front of East College. For more ambitious musical performance we had our "Mendelssohn Society," whose concerts were not probably so classical as we then esteemed them, but whose rehearsals gave us not a little pleasure. Athletics had hardly a name to live. Now and then a football was mysteriously dropped into the West College yard, and kicked about in a very promiscuous fashion; the freshmen and sophomores generally had a match of what was by courtesy called base-ball. The only intercollegiate contest of which I had any recollection, and as it seems the first ever to take place, was a ball game at Pittsfield between Williams and Amherst. Amherst was the challenging party, and the college by vote selected its team with much care and went forth to the contest with strong hopes. The game was not lacking in excitement. It was none of your new-fangled, umpire-ridden matches: the modern type of base-ball had not, of course, been invented. Foul balls were unknown, the sphere could be knocked toward any quarter of the earth or sky; runners between bases could be pelted with it by any of the outfielders. I think that the score stood something like 60 to 40, and it was not in favor of Williams. It was a melancholy company that trailed homeward after this contest past the Lanesboro pond; but since then I understand that times have changed.

[Dr. Gladden has embodied his college reminiscences more fully in his recent volume Recollections, wherein is told also the story of "The Mountains." (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1909.)]

Literary Monthly, 1893.

[Footnote 1: October, 1893.]

[Footnote 2: Demolished in 1908.]