NATURE'S GYMNASIUM. The old institution at Clinton possesses one advantage the value of which is inestimable. Its location is as healthful as it is charming. Physical vigor is indispensible to the brainworker. "Health is the bed-plate of the mental machinery." A scholar without health is a shorn Samson. College Hill is nature's gymnasium. The College and the Hill co-operate, the one to bestow all the refinement of an Attic culture, with which to crown the vigor of the Spartan discipline the other furnishes. A student writes: "The College is about four thousand feet above the level of the sea and still rising. The climate is peculiar. The zephyrs which steal so gently over the land, knocking down trees, throwing cars off the track and destroying villages, come from here. They all start back of the College barn, and never go the other way." The Rev. Dr. Andrew Hull, Class of '36, in the Half-Century Letter, read three years ago, says: "I very gratefully remember the arduous walks down and up College Hill, with a cane across my back, holding the elbows in line as I walked and inhaled through the nostrils, and puffed full volumes of breath explosively from the mouth. In due time my somewhat deformed chest was SO expanded that the ribs formed a perfect arch, and the lungs had ample room for their essential work. Possibly the now popular athletic sports would have done the same thing for me; but the exercise I took in the way described was sufficient, without the supplements of bruises, sprains, and ponderous hands.” COLLEGE PUBLICATIONS. The annual and triennial catalogues of the Institution, supplemented by three publications edited by the undergraduates, keep the alumni informed as to the events in the College world. The "Hamilton Literary Monthly," conducted by the Senior Class, is in the twenty-fourth volume. It holds a high place among college periodicals. "The Dartmouth Lit." recently said, "To be copied by the Lit. of Yale, or Williams, or Harvard or Hamilton, or by other truly excellent college journals, places the seal of an appreciation outside of one's own country, and incites the writer to better efforts." "The Hamilton Review" is published by the Emersonian society, and "The Hamiltonian" by the Fraternity men of the Junior Class. "The Hamiltonian" is a mirror of college life. It knows its place. Its own language is: 66 Loyalty is a sentiment, and it is of the heart first. There must be more than mere feeling. For, while loyal hearts cling long and faithfully, as in the devotion of the Scotch and English Jacobites to the Stuarts; yet in the end, lack of respect will stifle even loyalty. So we are glad of thorough work, honest dealing and no humbug in College. But these alone will not awake earnest loyalty. "The heart which beats loyally throbs by instants, and it is the little things, the things oft hidden, of daily life, that link the heartthrobs to any object-to home, to oft frequented haunts, to school, to college, and make one loyal to it. "Those who, from year to year, come back to Hamilton, and at anniversary feasts recall their college days, are wont to talk, not of ablative absolute, optative moods, functions of X, precipitate, Roman law and such like; but of what "the boys" did in their far college days, and how they looked at life, and how life seemed to them. While the locks have whitened and the strength abated, while the thought has widened and the judgment mightily matured the hearts that were here in the 30s, the 40s, the 50s, and the 60s, come back and are warm as they were then. So the inner things of college life are worth talking of, worth remembering. To embalm some of these in print "The Hamiltonian" exists. It means more and other than the catalogue: that speaks to brains and judgment for the work-side of college; we speak to hearts and to feelings, for the home-side, the play-side, the heartside of college life." STUDENT ANNALS. Ah! yes, what "the boys" did would furnish material for a volume, which might not always sustain the dignity of history, but would be perused with keen delight by hundreds of widely-scattered graduates in their counting rooms, libraries and offices, recalling those Sophomoric days when neither the weight of years nor of dignity oppressed them—those days when a meeting of Parliament or Senate did not concern them so much as a Faculty meeting, and the startling summons of "Pete," "Ho! Brown, stick your head out, Faculty wants you; pack your trunk!" When Professor J. R. Green, of Oxford University, England, 82 A HISTORICAL sat down to write a history of his country, he determined not to make it a record of English Kings and conquests, "a drum and trumpet history," but a history of the English people. The Hamilton historian, who will write the annals, not of the administrations of College Presidents, but of student life, will have many alumni readers. He will not fail to record those conversations in the far-off days, when the century was young, and when men now gray-haired and eminent, sat as happy students around open fireplaces cracking jokes as thoroughly seasoned as the dry back-logs which the laughing flames cracked. He will picture the frosty six-o'clock chapel, as seen by tallow-candle light, and the old village church, with its "fire of devotion and foot stoves," and good Dr. Norton preaching in cloak and mittens. C. NY. Among the illustrations, he might include the College dining hall, "the Commons," with the "buttery" underneath, wellsupplied with strong beer, cider, chewing tobacco and cigars, the profits of the sales of which, were the perquisites of some worthy charity student. That was before the days of the blessed Temperance Reformation. Knowing that a more grave history has put on record the public services of, for instance, such a philanthropist as Gerrit Smith, our historian would not depict him as he appeared in the Halls of Congress, a conspicuous statesman, but as he appeared to the College President, with his conspicuous boots protruding from under the bed, whither he had beat a precipitous retreat, and from which scholastic cloister he promptly replied to the question, "Gerrit, what are you doing there?" Meditating, sir!" To the pages of our student history the reader would not refer to find the public discourses of the eloquent Dr. Joel Parker, but there he would find the report of his discourse with a tutor, who after the term opening, was calling late arrivals to a strict account. "Parker," said he. Parker arose to his feet. "Sir." "Parker, you "PROF." PETER BLAKE. 66 |