NO TEACHER can say specifically what effect his teaching has had on any particular boy. Nor can any man define accurately the effect a school has upon its graduates. There are too many factors involved---diverse personalities, diverse homes, and varied influences after graduation. And now to make the problem even more difficult the College Board announces that "four studies just completed show that for all practical purposes drills and tutoring are useless," that abilities seem to grow "slowly and stubbornly, profoundly influenced by conditions at home and at school over the years" rather than by any intense classroom preparation.

By what, then, can we measure the value of Andover's output? The answer seems to be in the words quoted above, "abilities seem to grow slowly and stubbornly, profoundly influenced by conditions at home and at school over the years." In other words, the character of the school, to some extent, rubs off on the boys.

To one who for nearly forty years has studied and taught at Andover the school has a definite character, a quality which sets it apart from many, if not most, other schools, which explains why our Andover diploma is often more valued than a college degree. In speaking of the freedom enjoyed by our students Dr. Alston Chase of the faculty said recently: "We shall be doing society the best of services if we educate a handful of men who ... are able to make their own decisions and are willing to abide the consequences. The most fundamental of all moral laws is that which gives freedom only with entailed responsibility."

Those words "entailed responsibility" give the clue to Andover's personality as a school, and, we believe, the clue to the character of our alumni. The conception that responsibility is something to be accepted and fully carried out, or more simply that one's job must be done and done well, no matter how hard, still pervades the Andover community, although it seems to be vanishing among only too many sections of our populace. How deeply this attitude is engrained in our school's past we all know. Tradition tells us how in 1811 William Goodell walked the sixty miles from his home to Andover carrying his trunk on his back; how in 1812 David Kimball, desirous of an education, walked forty miles to Andover Hill in one day; how in 1870 George H. Cross, while working on a farm, committed Harkness's Latin Grammar and Kühner's Greek Grammar to memory, "rules and exceptions, fine print and notes," fixing every page in his mind, and thus gained admission to the Lower-Middle Class.

You have heard of Eliphalet Pearson, Principal and sole teacher of sixty pupils varying in age from Josiah Quincy of six years to James Anderson of 29, who recited and studied while crowded into one room, about thirty feet square. We cannot wonder at his statement, "I have been so long a teacher of boys that I have spoiled my temper." You know, too, of "Uncle Sam" Taylor, who conducted morning and evening chapel and taught four or five classes a day in Greek, Latin, Ancient History, and Ancient Geography as well as carrying on the administration of the school. He did this with such a small faculty that whereas today the average is one teacher for every ten boys, in 1855 the average was one teacher for each 79 students.

There are many boys who during the last century and a half found in the ruggedness of our past a strength of character which led to important contributions to our national life. It seems scarcely necessary to mention Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1825, poet and humorist; Samuel F. B. Morse, 1805, the inventor of the telegraph; William Francis Bartlett, 1854, major-general in the Union Army at the age of 25 and one of the first advocates of reconciliation between the states; Othniel Charles Marsh, 1856, whose vast discoveries in vertebrate paleontology helped to make the theory of evolution "no longer a possibility or probability but the living truth"; William Henry Moody, 1872, justice of the Supreme Court and the first "trust buster"; Henry Augustus Rowland, 1867, who ranks among the world's greatest physicists; Isaac Ingalls Stevens, 1833, explorer of the West, first governor of Washington Territory, and Civil War general, who died leading his troops at the Battle of Chantilly.

Obviously space does not permit the mention of scores of other graduates like Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of State and Secretary of War, who have won renown in past years, or of the more than 400 (a larger number than any other preparatory school can show) listed in the 1957 edition of Who's Who. These represent every category in our national life from Astrophysicist to Utility Executive, from Educator to Machinery Manufacturer, from Financier to Publisher, from Bishops Henry Hobson and Richard Emrich from College Presidents James Phinney Baxter, William E. Stevenson, and James Q. Newton, from writers James Ramsay Ullman and John Lardner, to doctors Benjamin Spock and Dan Elkins, judges Carroll C. Hincks and Charles T. Donworth, and dramatic producers Seth Parker and Robert W. Sarnoff.

It seems apparent that a long succession of such teachers and students set the tone of the school, and that the character our graduates take with them when they leave is, to a great degree, the creation of their predecessors. In the past, as is true today, these men and boys came to terms with life even if the terms were hard. There was a job to do, and they did it to the best of their ability without tears and without loud cries for help to the government, the courts, or the psychiatrists. They had a sense of duty, a feeling of responsibility, and they passed it down in some degree to the present generation. Most of our boys work hard, and many of them study with persistence and faithfulness, even in the face of discouragement, that are beyond praise. It is fair to add that increasing numbers of boys are taking sophomore courses during their freshman year in college, and some are taking college courses in certain subjects while still undergraduates at Andover.

If it is right to think of Andover as a school which still hands down that old-fashioned virtue of a sense of duty, that is a particularly significant fact in the world today. That virtue stands in direct opposition to reliance on a paternalistic government and also in opposition to pressure groups which would measure their wages not by service rendered but by the damage they can do to our economy.

That willingness to do the job which, we believe, has been cultivated here brings with it adjustment to the community and adjustment to one's self. Every boy, when he leaves home, is to his parents a Special Case. But here he learns that the whole is more important than any of its parts, that the school is more than the individual. We have been called in a derogatory tone a "sink or swim" school, an epithet that is far from true today; but even if it were, there must be some incentive to swim, in reality a pretty harsh lesson in swimming may be better than sinking, and what is more, such a lesson may obviate the danger of sinking in the future.

Andover, then, is a school which because of its rather stern tradition has helped many a boy to make that adjustment to himself and to society which is the first step toward maturity. Our teachers have seen it happen many times, and when a boy has taken that step, he has, we think, some rights to the time-honored title of "Andover man."

This seems to me at least a partial answer to the question with which we started, Does Our Product Justify Our Existence? When Samuel Phillips stated that "the principal object of this Institution is the promotion of true Piety and Virtue," we may wonder whether among other qualities he did not have in mind that one which was so characteristic of his day and which still distinguishes the school he founded, the willingness to do a hard job and to do it well.

THOSE WERE still Spartan days at Andover---ice in the water-pitcher and snow across the foot of your bed when you woke up of a winter's morning. We lived in Latin or English Commons, those three-story, wooden rookeries, originally twelve, in our day eleven. In each house were six quite spacious and pleasant studies, with two ample bedrooms each, all for nine dollars a year. Each study had its coal stove. The two occupants furnished and took entire care of the "suite." Some good numen must have watched over the Commons, for the boys often threw their ashes, live coals and all, down the cellar stairs, to save the trouble of going out to the dump. No plumbing, of course; only the brick "Joe" in the rear, equally offensive, winter and summer.

There was no infirmary. If you were ill, it was nobody's business but your roommate's, who brought you meals from Marland's unappetizing fare. If you lived in Commons, you had to board at Marland's, at three dollars a week. If you could afford it, this austerity could be relieved at "Chap's" goody shop on the way downtown.

Friday noon the rooms were inspected by members of the Faculty. This always entailed a dusty "turning out" beforehand. Woe to the unlucky one who had smoked in his room even just after inspection the week before. Coy could smell it the next week for all the airing out meanwhile.

It was the day of the great triumvirate, Bancroft, Comstock, and Coy, feared, respected, even beloved by some, but on no intimate terms with any of us. But they could teach---and did---Latin and Greek, which, as they taught them, included a wholesome admixture of Things in General. Their gift to us was a gift without price. Let us remember, too, Graves, and MacCurdy, and Gile and that precise, formal, but lovable Mr. Chips, Pap Eaton, who interlarded Algebra with hours in Shakespeare, bless him!

Sometimes an odd or less popular chap got his room "stacked." In his absence neighbors piled all his furniture in the middle of the room and created general disorder. In one instance, Bancroft, ostensibly shocked, expressed his horror to the school that a book had been defaced and ruined. This was plain sacrilege---a book is a sacred thing. But it transpired that the book was a "trot," a form of literature under heavy ban in those days.

Gus Trowbridge, who in after life was Professor of Physics and Dean of the Graduate School at Princeton, told me that he would have graduated with the Class of Eighty-eight but for an illicit trip to Boston on which he was spotted. His relations with Comstock had at no time been cordial---his fault perhaps---and Comstock may have been the chief agent in his leaving. But in course of time came retribution. Trowbridge had been living in Italy for a year or so after his school days. One morning at Capri he sallied forth to go up to Anacapri, when whom should he meet but Comstock? The meeting was cordial enough. Comstock was also bound for Anacapri, but uncertain of the way. Trowbridge would be happy to guide him. They hired two donkeys from a peasant girl near by, and mounted, the girl walking between them to urge on the beasts. Trowbridge, at home in Italian, conversed with the girl. Comstock, surprised at his fluency, confessed that he knew no Italian but resorted to Latin. "And they always understand me." To prove it he addressed a Latin remark or two to the girl, who smiled politely as if she understood, then turned to Trowbridge in voluble appeal. "Tell me, Trowbridge," said Comstock, "what did she just say to you?" Sweet was Trowbridge's reply. "She said, 'Sir, What is that old goat trying to tell me now?' " Old scores were repaid in full.

For some of us there were triumphs, athletic, personal, social, as for Al Stearns, Tom Cochran, George Case, and the Bliss boys, but for most of us life was drab and undistinguished. There were high moments, like the rush and fight in Exeter station after Exeter's football triumph in 1887, which Coy stopped by shouldering his massive way through the middle of the fray. And there were golden spring afternoons down in Pomp's Pond. It was all very good for us, no doubt, but now at seventy years' distance it stirs no nostalgia.

CAVE OCTOGENARIUM when he begins to reminisce! For often on the sea of memory an old tub assumes the lines of a Cup Defender. But since you have invited it---In the early '90's Phillips Andover was almost entirely destitute of bricks and mortar but measured up in a big way with faculty brains. As a matter of fact it was a much less democratic atmosphere than it is today, because the wealthy patronized high priced boarding houses the board of which was probably twice what it was at Major Marland's, where many of the less affluent students ate. Among these were the students who lodged in English and Latin Commons, the only school dormitories. These square wooden boxes could boast of no heating facilities except small stoves, and "open plumbing, openly arrived at," as all the water had to be carried from an outside pump.

Today, as it should be, a common eating place and school dormitories standardize the environment of all students whether enjoying scholarships, earning their way, or paying the full tuition.

The Administration pursued a strictly laissez faire policy in all matters except those dealing with the curriculum, chapel attendance, and the eight o'clock curfew. If you fell ill, or broke an arm, you called in a doctor from town. There was no school infirmary or supervision of health or sports. Dr. Bancroft, the headmaster, has by now no doubt assumed legendary qualities. He appears in memory as a venerable old gentleman. This illusion is heightened by full gray whiskers. As a matter of fact he was 53 years old in 1892. Some ten seniors were shaken free from this illusion of old age in a very conclusive manner.

A dinner was held at the Vendome Hotel in Boston at which Dr. Bancroft was to speak and certain seniors were allowed to attend. It was understood that the group including the Principal was to return on a train which left Boston between 9:30 and 10:00 o'clock, and check in as usual at the Principal's office in the little brick building which became the Faculty Club after Phillips Hall was built. The seniors were seated at one round table at dinner. Dr. Bancroft had delivered his speech from the head table on the rostrum, and the hour was within twenty minutes of train time. We had decided that we need not worry about that train, when to our chagrin Dr. Bancroft said a quiet good night to the toastmaster, gathered up his little green bag and left the head table. We tardily followed suit, secured our hats and expected to find Dr. Bancroft hailing a cab at the front door. On the contrary, he settled his bowler hat firmly on his head and took a firm grip on his green bag and set out at a miler's pace for North Station. It was like a fox hunt, only the quarry was always safely ahead, and you may be sure the pack did not give tongue. We made the train but it was a winded bunch of seniors who staggered into North Station. Dr. Bancroft was apparently none the worse for the race, and I suspected a twinkle of amusement in his eye, as we checked in at his office after we had toiled up the School Street hill from the station. We recalled afterwards that our headmaster had been a runner in college, and he certainly had kept fit.

IN THE FALL of 1890 a small thirteen-year-old boy entered Phillips Academy at Andover. His brother, Carroll Perry, had graduated in 1886 and, I am sorry to say, misjudged a fly in the Andover-Exeter baseball game which allowed McClung a three-bagger and won the game for Exeter, 7-6. Forty years later, in 1926, another error on the part of Andover allowed Exeter again to win 7-6 in the ninth inning. I am mentioning these things because, to me at thirteen, my brother's error was very important and later when I was Principal of Exeter an error on the part of the Andover shortstop was very important, too.

My dear mother felt that I was a little young to go to Andover but my father was confident that I should go. I am not sure but that Mother was right, although my memories of Andover are all very pleasant. I lived at the Carpenter house with a number of older boys, but that suited me all right.

I certainly was impressed with the age of the prep class (they seemed like men to me), and also with the fact that all of them seemed to have had a year of Latin. My teacher of Latin was Mr. Comstock, "Commie," as he was called. He looked me over for a week or two and as I was absolutely innocent of Latin he thought I ought to have a tutor. My father said, "No, my son has a perfectly good mind and he needs no tutor." This grew into a great controversy. Both Mr. Comstock and my father were Scotch-Irish, and finally my father became so angry that he told me that I couldn't go back to Andover but that I could go to any preparatory school I chose. I had known several very good Lawrenceville boys who came to Williamstown in the summer, and so I chose Lawrenceville, and that's where I went at the beginning of the winter term. As a matter of fact, I know now that my father was wrong in the discussion. Mr. Comstock was the best friend I had at Andover, except Mr. Bancroft, but I was young and had been brought up to mind my father, so with many regrets I left. This brings up something which has always seemed to me to be amusing. As a prep I had been pledged to the PAE fraternity but of course was never initiated. Forty years later my friend, John Woolsey, became president of the whole society of the PAE, and looking up the records, saw that I had been pledged, so President Hopkins and I were initiated into PAE. I think I had the longest period of probation ever known in the Andover Societies!

Two or three members of my class of 1894 became intimate friends, particularly John Woolsey, for whom I had a tremendous admiration as a scholar. Also George Schreiber. Both these boys went to Yale and both had distinguished careers.

I had known Al Stearns when I was a boy in Williamstown and he became one of my most intimate friends. When I was asked to become principal of Exeter, the first person I went to for advice was Al Stearns. Al was better than I in all sports except tennis and, like the champion he was, he and Bart Hayes challenged Tad Jones and me to a tennis match about the first Saturday after I had come to Exeter. The boys all turned out and Al knew perfectly well what the result would be. It was a very magnanimous thing to do, especially when old Dr. Soule, the son of an Exeter principal, told me that for a period of 85 years no Exeter principal had ever been in Andover. Conditions now are much better. Both Al Stearns and Jack Fuess were my dear and intimate friends while I was in Exeter.

As I look back, I think that Andover was a great place---a little rough compared to Lawrenceville---but O! so genuine. It was an honest place and a generous place with high standards of scholarship, as you can see from what I have said about my Latin experience. Mr. Comstock rather took away one's confidence but I never had any trouble with Latin again in school or college. As a matter of fact, I took Latin for four years in college.

Well, this is the story. For years Al Stearns never referred to my having been at Andover and while I have never tried to conceal it, the Exeter boys never knew about it until my Exeter life was about over. I have always been very grateful to Andover and, strangely enough, when I went back to teach at Lawrenceville, Andover came down to play football and the old feeling of loyalty surged up in me and I am afraid I had a sneaking hope that Andover might win. It was my first love. Now Lawrenceville has become a real rival of Exeter and Andover. Lawrenceville until recently was headed by a wonderful man, Allan Heely, who also was a devoted friend of Al Stearns. So it can be said that Andover traditions had a big influence on three great schools ---Exeter and Lawrenceville, as well as Andover.

I AM TOUCHED---to be offered from 500 to 1500 words to say what Andover has meant to me is as pleasant an invitation as I could want. I could, of course, say it all in nine words: "I love you, I love you, I love you." But the school (and Dr. Fuess) will want something more specific. I shall take the 500-word course, or thereabouts, as my abbreviated career on the Hill was not illustrious enough to justify 1500 words of reminiscence: I have, forgive the cliché, not enough pearls to cast. Even so, I find it hard going to dig down through the memories of half a century---over forty years of which were lived entirely outside the United States---and say just what it is that makes me look back to Andover as the one place on the long trail of my so-called education for which I feel an ever increasing affection and respect. Decency---and Al Stearns---at once leap into my mind.

Decency because, although thirty years as a foreign correspondent have made me afraid of the word democracy, Andover was one of the purest, least self-conscious, utterly unpretentious democracies I have lived in anywhere on earth. This is easily demonstrated (though when we were boys at school there the idea never occurred to us) by the fact that a good half of the school's heroes were boys who were working their way through. Example: when red-headed Barney Reilly walked into my room my first week at school---when I was still tacking up pennants and hanging those plaster gargoyles and half-moons that the Italian used to sell on the campu--s-and "asked" could he sign me up to have his laundry do my miserable washing---why, I nearly fainted: to be in the same room with---to be spoken to so kindly!---by such a great man. And he was great: Barney, elder brother of Jim Reilly, then another Reilly; all baseball stars of the first magnitude, both at Andover and Yale. And then those other great Andover boys, who did not have to work their way through, but who were none the less men "for a' that." John Kilpatrick: football and track---and a splendid school fellow. For those were the days when football was football and athletes were athletes, in the Greek sense---and not the paid pin-brained dinosaurs who prowl the campus now. Taking degrees in Public Relations for Filling Stations.

Then, if more evidence of democracy is required, there was that uncouth, Lincolnesque rail-splitter (or head-splitter) type in Commons, who served notice on the school that if anybody tried to haze him somebody was going to get hurt---who barricaded his door, which, honour demanded, should be charged and broken down---and several bodies were hurt, notably his; but he had dealt out ample proof that he "had been there on that day"---and thus joined our Pantheon. When he graduated, after four years of Andover, I am sure he was just as couth as Professor "Colonel" Horace Martin Poynter.

Al Stearns. We have a saying here in England, to which I first came in August 1914, to become a detribalised American, that the Headmaster makes the school. I think there is a lot in it. When we put our own son down for Wellington, almost the day he was born, it was almost entirely because of the Headmaster who was then there. He, alas, was cut in half during the Blitz, when he stepped out of his door just as a bomb came down. But Wellington gave me another tie with Andover, a most congenial link; for Sumner Scott, whom Dr. Claude Fuess invited to deliver one of the lectures on the Alfred Stearns Foundation in 1935, was my son's housemaster at Wellington. And, even more personal, H. L. O. Flecker, whom Dr. Fuess invited to visit (and appraise) Andover in 1938, married my wife's cousin, "Pippa" Hessey---and I was there at their wedding at Christ's Hospital, the "Blue Coat" school, when my son Dan was her page, all togged up in white satin.

When he returned to England, after he had visited twenty schools in the United States, Flecker reported that he had found Andover "admirable": which I accepted as being as much a tribute to him---a hard-driving but very efficient schoolmaster---as it was to my old school. He is dead; but if memory serves me right I think he was most impressed by the "maturity" he found there: the unquestioned emphasis upon self-reliance. But that may be only my own feelings; for outstanding above all Andover memories is that fine sense of values---which, because of its disdain for the worship of material things, or the urge to 'get on' at any price, gave a man the courage to be something, rather than just to have. Coming from a family which always spoke of life in the past tense---when we had this or when we had that---material things have never meant very much to me: either their gain or their loss---and I am sure that what Andover gave me most was the corroboration of a sneaking childhood belief that life was never so cruel as people said it was: not if you lived life up to the hilt.

And now---a final truth which has just occurred to me---perhaps it is not Andover at all, or just Andover alone, that I look back to with such nostalgia: it is Andover in its setting of the old U.S.A., when I first went to study on the Hill in 1905. The America that we fool Americans are now manufacturing ourselves out of: deliberately, ruthlessly destroying our natural habitat. It is the fact that we don't care which makes this so stupid. And so---just as Turgenev set some of his most poignant scenes in the blessed countryside of old Russia: talks between man and woman beside a birch copse, its leaves trembling in their spring green and the birds singing---so I, today, also look back to Andover---in memory---in settings of the America I loved so much at that time. The long and lovely Chesapeake before the outboard motor churned its peaceful waters into pandemonium (it's a wonder the fish aren't frenzied, and very likely they are)---surf-casting along the New Jersey coast in the Autumn, when the sands were empty, and we could strip, swim naked, and dry off basking in the desolate sand dunes. That, odd as it may seem to some people, is always the 'frame' in which I see Andover:---the old Light, still standing guard by the changeless sea, the long line of white surf, sands in the hot sun, and that lovely aroma of dead fish and rotting seaweed. Somehow, that smell always gave me strength: it said, "Go off. Make your way in the city. And if you don't make it, come back to us: we will always be here." Will they?

And to end with Al Stearns, the finest thing I ever learned about him I did not even suspect until I read the book of Dr. Claude Fuess ---who picked up the torch and carried it so splendidly after him: 6000 Andover boys passing through his hands---I learned, in Independent Schoolmaster, that Al Stearns was a fanatic fisherman. And now the god that I once feared has become lovable. How I wish I could have cast a fly with him!

WHEN I went to Andover in 1913, the world was a sensible, predictable place. Nobody had any questions to ask of it---least of all I. I loved every minute of Andover and have done so ever since---which is perhaps as much a confession as a compliment.

My closest friends and I felt we were the best people in the best school anywhere. We regarded our close relationship with Exeter as traditionally inescapable but at best a form of slumming. There were secret societies then, which gave form and substance and a spurious rationale to our juvenile snobbery. Some of them, we were convinced (the ones we were in), endowed their members with a special social cachet which others could reach for but not grasp. I knew later that they were all bad, because they were affronts to the real spirit of the school.

The opportunities for self-exploitation in extra-curricular activities were a boundless sea on which I embarked at once. Hours of my mis-spent youth were devoted to mastering the singularly limited musical resources of the mandolin. And there were others of the like. I still have the watch-charms to prove it.

But all these trivial goings-on went forward under---and I think because of---the extraordinary tolerance of the faculty. I wouldn't have thought of its members as, on the whole, benevolent. They were better than that. They let you make mistakes without pedantic agitation on their part. This was a maturing attitude, for even a fool gets tired of himself at last.

And of course the real quality of the school was the men. I had been just as well taught before, but never by so many. Under Archie Freeman I never mastered the rivers of America, but I learned what a first-class scholar was, balanced and judicial. Ignorance didn't irritate him. It just saddened him. I know because I caused it so often. And who can forget Vergil and Horace with Charlie Forbes? Kindly, urbane, polished, when he said gently, "Dux femina facti," he beamed in male complicity at his classes. When he read an ode, he was Horace, and the Falernian wine was just around the corner.

"Zeus" Benner taught me not only Greek; he taught me the beauty of exact expression, which has not left me since. One day I was unprepared, and when he called on me I tried to bluff---and collapsed. There was no word---just a silence that seemed endless, and that made me thoroughly ashamed of myself. I had never felt that way before. It wasn't that I had offended him. You just didn't kid Homer.

I saw little of Al Stearns. His shyness made him seem austere, aloof. But the power he wielded was the moral force of the school, and his influence on my life was inestimable, particularly later.

After five years of unhappiness in business after college, I mounted an assault upon his batteries. And he put me in the school business. He needed me for nothing, but perhaps he got tired of reading my letters. Finally he wrote and said, "All right, how little will you come for?" In a few days the deal was done. What my life would have been without his generosity and encouragement I hesitate to speculate.

Andover then was very heaven. After a few weeks of lack of occupation I was told that a new section in English had been formed, which I was to take over the next day. "You start on page 113 of Ben Hur," I was told. I had never taught before. 1 had never even read Ben Hur, which I have since regarded as an altogether dreadful book. Somehow I developed that veneer of omniscience which teachers use to conceal their occasionally splendid ignorance. The game was on.

To go to faculty meetings was to be made privy to the ultimate arcana. The grave and reverend signors had seats in the front row, which no one would have thought of usurping. The novices sat like "preps to the rear." Once that year I expressed an innocuous opinion about something. The old guard turned around and glared at me. I was instructed if not edified.

I cannot deliver myself of any conventional encomiums about Andover. I love it and am proud of it. When it came time to leave, I was sad, and would be again. The place had stood for everything I thought first-class, and it still does. My opinion is beyond sentiment, and the better for being so.

But there was still no farewell. Every year Al Stearns would come down to preach at Lawrenceville. As a boy it had never occurred to me that anybody ever called him "Al." But when we settled down Saturday evening and relaxed, he would open the floodgates of his reminiscence and take me into his heart and mind. He was uproariously funny and intensely moving.

Those were golden evenings. Come to think of it, everything about Andover, from 1913 till now, is a golden memory, for my end has depended upon my beginning there.

UNDOUBTEDLY my most embarrassing moment at Andover occurred on a gloomy November morning in the Fall of 1913, in a class presided over by Horace Poynter. After having me attempt to translate a certain passage no less than three distinct times, he rapped on his desk and announced that in all his wide experience I was, bar none, the stupidest student who had ever managed to progress beyond Caesar into Cicero.

The next morning I felt somewhat, but not much, better when he offered an apology, explaining to the other members, as well as to me, that Mrs. Poynter had soundly scolded him for speaking to any boy like that, particularly to one who has been at Old P.A. not much more than a month and had apparently not been very well trained down there in New Jersey.

Horace and I joked together over this episode in the Spring of 1915 when I won a Dove Latin Prize for a sight translation of Virgil. I say a prize, rather than the Prize, because what I won was one half of the first and second prizes added together. The other half went to Bill Kirkland---now Chairman of the First National Bank of Houston, Texas---who graciously suggested: "Hell, you take it!," which of course I declined to do. The result was that neither of us had the satisfaction of being the recipient of the Dove Latin Prize, and the pride of each was accordingly tempered.

This is not the story of a Latin prize. It is about Charlie Forbes, who taught us Senior Latin---and it has nothing to do with Latin either. Its subject is a remark he once made to us before class opened one morning, a remark that I have frequently recalled over the past 44 years. A friend of his had died suddenly, and the evening before Charlie had been to see his wife and offer sympathy. What he said to us was this: "I want you all to remember something she said to me. She did not say how remarkable her husband was, or how good he had been to her, or what an eminent citizen he was, or how greatly respected. She merely looked at me and remarked: 'He was so interesting to live with.' I cannot think of any greater compliment---and I sincerely hope that some day it may be said of each one of you."

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THE MOST astonishing thing to me now as I try to recall the days at Andover is my almost completely detached acceptance of nearly everyone and everything there. That which I liked I accepted, I fear, without much appreciation; that which I disliked (and there were such things as R.O.T.C. drill and sham combat) I accepted without real rebellion. It was not that I was unprepared for a great deal of what surrounded me on the Hill, though possibly the exposition of the rugged life of the Latin Commons in the 1880's as related by my father was not precisely the information most essential to the needs of a somewhat shy, and undoubtedly too serious, seeker after learning. However, he had endeavored to inculcate in me his own deep appreciation of the opportunities awaiting me at Andover, for he never forgot the teaching of men like Bancroft, Comstock, Coy, and McCurdy.

There were indeed some memorable moments: Charlie Forbes' enthusiasm for Vergil and my astonishment that he knew the Aeneid by heart both in Latin and in English (I am right about this, am I not?) and curiously enough F. E. Newton's persistent, matter-of-fact drill in Mathematics, which has stayed with me all these years. I now know the excellence of his teaching, but I then accepted it as my due. There were moments of excitement and satisfaction, too. Pietro Yon at the organ in the Stone Chapel, his technical skill observed from a choir seat close to the master; quiet moments with previously unexplored books in the dim recesses of Brechin Hall, its walls covered with portraits from an impressive if then unappreciated past. Nor have I forgotten walks in the warm sun of an Andover Spring; or the audacity of Fred Boyce informing us that he had fooled us all winter into thinking that the Physics Lab was warmer than that cold place ever really was by keeping the thermometer over the radiator; or the friendly sharing by my benchmate, C. C. Yu, of pictures of his China home-land.

As a historian I find it sad to have to confess my inability to remember, in all their vivid details, the situations and events which shadow-like inhabit my memory. Certainly the class-room instruction served me well through college and graduate school, and many friendly associations are pleasantly recalled.

It seems to me now that what I might remember in detail is not so important. It is rather that all these years I have been trying, often without realizing it, to get for myself and to set before my students the satisfactions both personal and academic then freely offered but so casually accepted. The extent to which I have succeeded is closely related to the standards which I found all about me on Andover Hill.

I AM NOT going to say that Phillips Academy, Andover, is the best preparatory school in the world, because everyone knows that it is, and it would be superfluous to repeat it.

What I would like to tell you about is one or two incidents that impressed me at the time, and still impress me, after forty years. They were trivial, or perhaps they were not. At the time, they meant my whole life. So I will give you some short sketches of my memories of Andover, some of them strictly hear-say but believed by the student body at the time:

DOC PAGE: Here was an awesome individual who shortly after your arrival as a Freshman gave his famous "Smut Talk". I must say he really got down to cases---and with illustrations too! As I look back I think it was probably a good thing and kept a lot of us from making some terrible mistakes.

It was known as the Absolute Gospel that Doc Page put saltpeter in the food at the Beanery, a potassium nitrate concoction aimed at quieting the amorous feelings of the SOB who might otherwise have torn the town to shreds! They give it to convicts, I am told. Despite all this, Doc was always there when you needed him and I think of him with nostalgia.

ZEUS BENNER: I cannot recall his first name (Allen R., I think) but it did not matter because he spoke Greek better than Homer and was a Cross Country Marathon runner of the highest order. He would lead us over hill and dale at a pace that made present jet travel tame in comparison. I shall never forget these little jaunts because I bear the scar of one to this day. We approached a stone wall over which Zeus sailed like a leader in the Grand National, but I failed to make it and struck my knee on a sharp rock---later requiring several stitches. I would not attempt it to-day.

"DRIP" ISAAC: That was not his real name, but it will do. He received the curious appellation of "Drip", so it was said, from the fact that he used to water the flowers from his bedroom window each night before retiring, and on several occasions had watered innocent passers-by and others who might be leaning out the window to enjoy the Autumn or Spring air, as the case might be. But he was one of the best profs I've ever known.

BARTLET HALL: This burned down one night, in the winter I think it was, amidst the most terrific excitement. In those days smoking was only permitted in the Grill and in a tailor shop down town, but there were many who preferred to lie on their backs with their heads inside the fireplaces and smoke up the chimney. Others used to ignite rolls of toilet paper up the chimney to see the sparks fly out at the top. It was thought that one or the other of these things might have ignited the soot in a chimney and caused the fire. It was a honey while it lasted but fortunately there were no serious casualties.

CARL PFATTEICHER: I can still sing in Latin, thanks to him, although that is the only Latin I ever learned, despite numerous attempts. He got me on the Glee Club, which resulted in many pleasant trips to Rogers Hall and other places and I must say I enjoyed it. Later I became leader of the Orchestra and we had a local outfit known as "Flaherty's Famous Faultless Fiddlers" that supplied music on demand for dances or what have you.

Carl's specialty was Bach, but on rare occasions he could be persuaded to play Boogie-Woogie, at which he was no less the master. He missed his calling. He should have gone into the movies in which he would have been an enormous success.

And so we come to

GEORGIE HINMAN: I had heard about him long before I went to Andover. He was said to have been the strongest member of his class at Harvard. He had a wooden leg, acquired, so it was said, by being run over by a street car. He was built like a bull and looked it. In class he continually chewed on a pencil and whenever a bad translation was given, he would snap the pencil in half with his teeth before launching a scathing attack on the poor victim. It was said he kept the sock on his wooden leg firmly affixed with thumb tacks. This I never saw, but some of my classmates swore to it.

Georgie reminded me of Professor Challenger in Conan Doyle's "Lost World", and I expected at any moment to have him spring from his chair and rend me tooth and nail.

There was one time, however, when he was incapable of doing anything. Some of the boys in his dorm were in the Chemistry class and they found a disused gas pipe in the wall which they proceeded to fill with a high explosive. The result of touching this off was to blow a large hole in the side of the dormitory. Georgie did spring from his bed with a howl of rage but someone had purloined his wooden leg and there was nothing he could do but put everyone on probation.

I was a bad Latin student. I just couldn't grasp it, much as I tried. One day as I was giving one of my brilliant translations, the pencil in Georgie's mouth snapped like a pistol shot. The sweat poured down me like Niagara. I could see him crouching for the spring and my whole young life up to that moment passed before my eyes.

"Mr. Heilner", said a soft and steely voice, "just because you went to a school where Suzy Brown gave you ninety-nine and seven tenths per cent because your father asked her out to dinner doesn't mean you can get away with it in my class. Kindly leave this classroom and get just as far away from it as you possibly can!"

Years later I was invited back to Andover to give a lecture and show some of my films.

When Al Stearns introduced me, he suggested I might give my reason for having travelled to the four corners of the world.

I saw Georgie sitting down in the front row and I couldn't resist it. I told the story just related and said: "The real reason is that Georgie Hinman cast me into Outer Darkness and I've just gotten back!"

Over a drink later we had a good laugh.

Andover gives a lot of things to each of her sons, but to me especially she gave the encouragement and understanding of one of the most wonderful persons it has ever been my privilege to know---Claude M. Fuess.

ANDOVER MEMORIES! What a variety of them I have. Football, for example. Playing third string center during the week and warming the bench on Saturdays.

Many of these football memories have to do with a fellow named Batty (or is it Battey?) Six foot five. Two hundred and thirty pounds. Age twenty-eight. A year before he had been driving a truck in the Argonne Forest. He sauntered out on the field one afternoon about a week after the opening of school in jersey and pants near to bursting from the bulk of Batty inside them. He wore a pair of orange oxfords, for Andover had no size 16 football shoes---yet. He also wore a large, rather shaggy mustache.

They made him a guard, which meant that five days a week a third-string center had to scrimmage against this colossus. I had my full share of Charley horses and black and blue marks that season.

A dismal season most of it was, too. We went to Exeter very much the underdog, for even Batty, who had shaved off his mustache at Coach Daly's request, had failed to use his bulk to advantage against our opponents.

Underdogs, eh? Well no one had seen the new set of plays Daly gave us the week before the game. We practiced them only in the gym behind closed doors. The four backfield players had squares of brown cloth---just the color of a football---sewn on the front of their jerseys. In the usual formation one back lined up about two yards behind an end, while the other three huddled smack behind the center. The ball came back into three pair of hands. The three backs doubled up and took off in three different directions.

Warming the bench at Exeter, knowing the signals, I still could not see who had the ball. Small wonder then that Exeter couldn't figure it out. Time and again they tackled the wrong man. Moreover, Batty, aroused at last by Daly's pre-game fight talk, whipped out most of Exeter's first line early in the game.

For the underdog it was a real push-over. Andover 19, Exeter 0

We had quite a bonfire that evening.

Then there was track. I tried to become a high jumper under "Shep", who finally was good enough to tell me what he really thought. "Bovey, you certainly have got lots of enthusiasm, but you sure do lack agility". Even though my roommate was track captain Ed Hills, I couldn't win even my numerals---lacking agility.

All memories such as these are pale and a trifle faded compared with those of "the fire", for I am the fellow who, in the spring of 1920 (my senior year) made the best try at burning down Bartlet Hall that had been made in many a year.

Ed Hills and I were billeted on the top floor in the northwest corner, up there where the winter winds really whined around the windows, and the clock on Pearson Hall just about lifted you out of bed every hour.

I was back from a year in France with the Medical Corps and found some of Andover's regulations rather stifling. The smoking rules for instance.

Ed also liked to "shoot a butt" before going to bed.

Across our fireplace we had a narrow cot on which was an Army bed tick filled with excelsior. A heavy green curtain was tacked up over the mouth of the fireplace. We would get into pajamas and bathrobe, curl up on the cot, draw aside the curtain, stick our heads in the fireplace and, in solid comfort, enjoy a cigarette before the final trip to the "can" for tooth brushing and a wash.

It was the last Sunday evening before the Easter holidays. Ed was already in bed when 1 finished smoking. I rubbed the lighted end of my cigarette against one side of the fireplace and dropped the butt into a pile that our faithful "Janny" had promised to dispose of during the vacation. Then I sauntered down to the "can", did what was to be done, and dropped into someone's room for a short bull session.

Meanwhile my butt was smoldering in the heap, and the strong March wind sucked part of the green curtain into the fireplace.

When I opened the door, the tick filled with excelsior was blazing to the ceiling.

I got Ed out of his room, and while he raced for a fire extinguisher, I shoved part of the burning tick out the window. The night watchmen arrived in nothing flat. So did house master "Liz" Parmelee, nattily attired in silk bathrobe and derby. He stuck his head in the door at just the wrong time and Ed hit him squarely with a stream from the extinguisher.

It was soon over, but the sleep of innocent youth was slow in coming that night. It was bad enough wondering what Al Stearns would do to me without also wondering what would have happened to Ed had my bull session lasted longer.

What did Al Steams do? He let me sweat out the last three days of school, the whole of a far-from-carefree vacation, and the first two days of the spring term. Only on the third day after my return did he summon me to his office.

Firmly but quietly Al said, "Bovey, a few days before vacation there was a fire in Bartlet Hall. We have been unable to attribute that fire to spontaneous combustion. Can you tell me anything about it?"

"I started the fire with a cigarette", I declared.

"Thank you," Al said. "Since you have told me the truth I won't have to expel you from the school, but I shall ask you to move out of the dormitory. There is a room ready for you in Johnson House."

That, dear children, is why Grandfather lived in Johnson House during the last two months of his career at Phillips Academy.

WHEN General John J. Pershing and his staff stepped ashore in France on June 13, 1917, there was an Andover unit serving on the Western front. As a section of the American Field Service, the Andover men were driving five-ton Pierce Arrow trucks that transported shells for the renowned French 75's. Working at night without headlights, they carried their cargoes up to the batteries defending a sector of the Chemin des Dames. This was a vital part of the defense line which barred the road to Paris against the German Crown Prince and his elite divisions.

Andover was the only preparatory school that saw service on the Western front. We had gone to France that spring to drive ambulances. When we arrived in Paris, however, we were informed that the French army needed a mobile force of fast trucks to serve their 75's. The Reserve Mallet, to be composed entirely of American volunteers, was being formed for this job. The Cornell Section was already organized and ready to leave for the front. We agreed to join the Reserve Mallet. But while we had enough men for an ambulance unit, our quota wasn't large enough for a camion (munitions truck) section. Accordingly, our Andover Section, as it continued to be called, was beefed up with college men, mostly from Harvard. Dartmouth formed Section Three, M. I. T. Section Four and other college units quickly came along. No other preparatory school was represented.

The history of the Andover Section goes back to early 1917. The war in Europe had been in progress two and a half years and several former Andover students were serving with the American Field Service or the Lafayette Flying Corps. To us students on the Hill, quite naturally, the great conflict was of intense interest. One morning after English class I remained behind to talk to Mr. Douglas Crawford and rather inadvertently let it slip out that I was thinking of applying for membership in the American Field Service. He was enthusiastic about the idea but suggested that I finish the school year. A day or two later the Headmaster, Dr. Alfred E. Stearns, sent for me. I entered his office with some trepidation but was immediately put at ease. Mr. Crawford had told him of my wish to join the AFS and he was all for seeing me through. Harold Buckley also came in on the scheme, and Dr. Stearns planned to have us go to France in June.

But as February and March days brought closer America's entrance into the war, it was decided to form an Andover ambulance unit and get us off as quickly as possible. In April we were on the way to France. Two members of the faculty---Mr. Frederick J. Daly and Mr. Alexander Bruce---were in charge of our unit.

In Paris, during the first week of May, we were outfitted with uniforms and equipment and stored our civilian clothes. From the French capital we rode by freight train out to Chateau Thierry and thence to our destination, Vierzy. There, camions from the Cornell Section met us and drove us and our baggage to a training camp. For about a week we were trained in French infantry drill, learned the rules of the road and were taught how to drive on rainy nights without lights over shell-pocked roads. Our most important lesson of all was the strategy of handling ourselves near the front so as not to draw the fire of the German 77's on our highly vulnerable cargoes and ourselves.

Then we were assigned, two men to a camion, and put to work as a munitions section. Mr. Daly was in command. In retrospect it is amazing how quickly we learned our job. Within three days after leaving the training camp we were making the night run up to Chateau Soupir, one of the hottest spots on the Western front. All along this sector (between Soissons and Rheims) the Crown Prince was probing for a weak spot; he was pressing his ruthless campaign of attrition. The losses on both sides were heavy.

I recall especially a June evening near Vailly. Our loaded camions were concealed under the protection of trees which lined the road. We were waiting for the darkness that would cover our progress to our batteries. The Germans were putting down a barrage to protect the shock troops that were trying to take Vailly. The French were laying a barrage down to defend their lines. There was a steady roar in which no single shell could be heard. Along the road to Vailly marched French reinforcements, poilus sweating under their heavy packs.

Here was the youth of France grimly pushing on toward the "abattoir." One could pick out a unit of marines, big blond fellows from Brittany, next a battalion of swarthy men from the Midi, then a shock troop outfit made up-our liaison officer whispered---of Apaches from Paris. But all of these Frenchmen---veterans of the Marne, of Verdun, of the Aisne---were inspired by the cry "On ne passe pas!" In a tragic procession headed in the reverse direction came the brancardiers carrying back the wounded and the dead.

Our routine usually began about mid-afternoon. We formed a convoy, drove to a rail head, picked up our munitions, and waited for darkness. Sometimes the roads were badly damaged by shellfire, often it rained, but our camions rarely went into a ditch. We seemed to develop an unerring ability to hold the road, even a temporary one, on the darkest night. Occasionally we had narrow escapes, usually from random German shelling. One evening, for instance, Playford Boyle and Robert Dole were in the camion a hundred yards ahead of the one Paul Crane and I were driving. It wasn't dark yet, but we were protected from enemy eyes by low hills and woods. In the half-light the war seemed a long way off. Suddenly, ahead of Paul and me sounded the dread whizz-bang of two German 77's. They bracketed the camion ahead, but fortunately did not strike near enough to inflict damage. Our convoy speeded up and got by that spot before the next German salvo.

The Andover Section, though made up of college men, alumni, and preparatory school boys, was a homogeneous and friendly crowd. This was due in no small degree to the fact that Mr. Daly, a former Yale All-American football captain, commanded not only the section but everyone's loyalty and respect. Two of our Harvard colleagues, later to attain intellectual distinction, were Malcolm Cowley and Bruce Hopper. Our mascots were acquired through the former.

One evening the convoy was stopped for a few minutes in rubble that had yesterday been the village of Viel Darcy. The 77's and probably some larger shells had been pounding it all day. Plaintive little cries from the ruins got Cowley down from his camion seat. He found two beautiful gray-striped kittens, which he put inside his shirt and took back to camp. The kittens grew up to be winsome creatures---and very possessive. One day a big shaggy dog wandered hopefully into our barracks. Before we could even greet him, two furious bundles of fur flew at him and drove him yelping out the nearest door.

One of the sports which entertained us on days when we didn't work was wrestling. Particularly memorable was the series of thrilling wrestling matches between Mr. Bruce and Frank Talmadge.

Certainly our greatest source of interest that summer was the constant air activity along the front. It was the day of the great individual aces, knights of the air joining battle as in the days of chivalry. One late afternoon, we watched a French plane take on apparently hopeless odds, four German fighters. In something like six minutes he had shot down all four enemies. Our liaison officer shouted in excitement: "It must be Guynemer!" And it was the great Guynemer in one of his most brilliant victories.

On another occasion, just before sunset, we saw a lone plane approach six others. There ensued the rattle of machine guns, and the lone plane started down. At the last moment it straightened out and came down in the French third-line trenches. We were so far away that we could not tell which side had won the clash. Next day we learned that the lone pilot was an American in the French service, James Norman Hall. Though seriously wounded, he somehow survived the action.

In late summer, when seven of us went to Paris on a short permission, we decided to take the tests for the Lafayette Flying Corps. At his office on the Avenue Bois de Boulogne, Dr. Edmund Gros put us through the tests. I had the humiliating experience of failing the "piano stool trick," a balancing test. The others all passed. Within a year all six were killed. Two of them, Schuyler Lee and Jack Wright, were Andover men. In that pioneer era the mortality rate among airmen, especially pursuit (fighter) pilots, was tragically high.

In November the U. S. Army took over and the Reserve Mallet passed into history. Some of the fellows went into the U. S. Army's motor transport, others entered the French artillery officers' school at Fontainebleau, a good many joined the French or American air forces. Harold Buckley, who became a member of the famous "Hat-in-ring" squadron, was credited with seven official victories and received the Distinguished Service Cross. George Dresser and I went down to Italy and drove ambulances on the Piave front.

Of our original Andover unit of some two dozen men, Mr. Bruce, Schuyler Lee, William Taylor, Jack Wright and George Dresser lost their lives in the First World War.

Perhaps the real test of the Andover unit was that, as a group of teen-agers, we were thrown into competition with college students and alumni not only in the other camion sections but within our own as well. I think it was the sober and critical judgment of our colleagues that the "Andover boys" came through. When the unit was disbanded Mr. Daly said with deep feeling: "You men won your letters in a hard test that reflects credit on your school and on you."

IT IS flattering to have you invite me to contribute to the volume of Andover reminiscences---particularly as I consider Phillips Academy the finest educational institution I attended from primary through graduate school.

The trouble is that I was there for only one school year and that after forty years my recollections are very fragmentary. For instance, I remember the gentle reproaches of Mr. McCurdy when I was late for his Math class (it was shortly before the kindly old man was killed by a car, as I recall)---and how those reproaches made me feel more ashamed of myself than any dressing down. "Mac" was succeeded in the middle of the school year by the young and energetic "Mike" Sides.

Chemistry was the province of the genial "Jimmie" Graham, who never seemed happier than on the occasion of his annual warning to the boys in his class. He would gleefully point to a large spot on the ceiling, all that was supposed to remain of a student of some previous year who had neglected the precautions Jimmie recommended when performing experiments with certain chemicals.

Hard-bitten Archibald Freeman taught American History at least at a freshman college level. He prided himself on not preparing for college boards; he was teaching history. Instead of plumbing a general textbook we had to find our way among at least secondary sources. Mr. Freeman was a hard marker and if passing his course was no guarantee of outstanding success in college entrance examinations, it meant that his student had a comprehensive grasp of the history of our century. Perhaps more than any other of my Andover instructors Mr. Freeman taught me how to study for the first time. College work was comparatively easy after that.

Back in 1920-21 Sunday afternoon chapel was compulsory. Catholic boys like me went instead to the rectory of the local Catholic parish. The curate assigned to instructing us in our religion was young, intelligent, and understanding; we used to look forward to our session with him every week.

Other fragments would involve the school's athletic heroes such as Willie Wingate and Leo Daley; the fat boys who excelled in the Plunge, an event long since abolished from swimming meets; and the universality of the intramural program. On school and club teams true sportsmanship was of the essence at Andover---as it undoubtedly is today.

What has impressed me about my year at Andover perhaps most of all is the high moral tone, the lack of class (or racial) consciousness, the effectiveness of the convictions that certain things simply weren't done. It may have been only a carry-over from a Puritan theology which no longer inspired belief, but for the time being moral convictions were strong. In any case I believe that the Andover tradition is an impressive one.

ANDOVER TO ME at 16 was a revelation of worldliness. I had grown up in New Haven in an atmosphere that was certainly sheltered. The only dances I had attended were small 8-to-11 P.M. affairs in the homes of professional friends of my family. Someone's parent would drive us, and among those in the car would be one or two of my sisters. All of us at the party would be what the fussiest parent would call wholesome. I had gone to a small country day school with other boys equally protected. I remember that the picture, in Breasted's Short Ancient History, of the statue of the shewolf suckling Romulus and Remus seemed risqué to us and caused the master to blush crimson.

Andover opened up new vistas. It's not that I did or saw anything wicked. But I listened attentively to all I heard, and dreamed of being a gay dog myself in Chicago or New York. The talk of friends about taking girls on individual dates was eye-opening. It seemed inconceivable to me that such freedom was permitted anywhere. A bit of gossip that made quite an impression was that, over Christmas vacation, one of our own classmates claimed to have been kissing an older woman of 27. That actual romances existed seemed proved by the arrival each day of tinted, scented letters, addressed to other occupants of the dormitory, in fancy girlish backhands. After I had been in school a few months, I couldn't stand it any longer. I bought a box of fine stationery with the seal of the school heavily embossed, and composed a fairly ardent letter to a girl at home. It must have surprised her because I had given her no earlier hint of such feelings.

Two classical courses gave me glimpses of the outside world. In Professor Forbes' class in Vergil I read that Aeneas had had an affair with Queen Dido in a cave, in which they had taken refuge during a thunder storm. It was surprising to me that a hero and a queen could forget their standards on such short acquaintance, and that this could be admitted in a text used in school. And one day in Greek, Professor Benner suddenly departed from his lecture and gave us a desperate-sounding plea to beware the faithlessness of women. It came so unexpectedly and was so obviously personal that it awed us into a goosefleshy attention. Looking back at this warning, I believe it increased rather than inhibited my interest in girls.

I did some outside reading. I found "Moll Flanders" in the school library through a pal's tip, and also had a brief chance to read passages from a book called, I think, "Confessions of a Bride," not from the library, which was being circulated privately at a rapid rate because of the urgency of the demand. I heard my first smutty stories. They made such an impression that I've never forgotten them, though I've had little success in remembering all the hundreds of funnier ones I've heard since. I had my first taste of liquor. An alumnus returning for the Exeter game had been billeted in our study. Since we hadn't invited him, we felt justified in taking an educational nip from a bottle of whiskey which he left in an open suitcase while he was reuning at his fraternity. The drop which I swallowed caused such an unexpected burning and choking that I was astounded to realize that this was the stuff so famed in song and story.

On a Sunday afternoon in the spring of senior year I was invited to come along with several friends who were going to call on an Andover family that included a couple of girls our age. Though the family was quite respectable, I sensed from the gaiety of my friends that they were not going because they were homesick for a touch of family life, and that the girls would probably not be quite as stand-offish as the ones I knew in New Haven. We sat around and we danced a little to the phonograph, nothing out of line. Yet there seemed---to me at least---an undertone of expectancy. Later I found myself in the pantry with one of the girls, getting pop and glasses for the crowd. I felt fairly sure that some approach from me would not make her indignant and that this was the moment to begin to be a roué. I felt dizzy while I hesitated. But soon the tray was ready and I had failed to come to any action. It was bitterly disappointing to realize that I had not become the gay dog I thought I had.

SOME OF US were lucky enough to have had our youth in the already fabled decade of the 1920's, and where better to start that decade and early manhood than at Andover in one of its really fine periods? While every man looks back on his own generation in school or college as the actual vintage years of that institution, I think we can truly say that ours was one in which both students and faculty had rare quality and color.

Andover was in the immediate pre-Cochran period. If the modern campus was then someone's dream, we were not aware of it. Few first-rate institutions have made daily and full use of a classroom building as shabby as old Main. The other classroom building, Pearson, had a foolish tower spoiling its Bulfinch lines, and its barniike interior was not even utilitarian. The entire library was housed in the second floor of mid-Victorian Brechin, which also doubled as the administration building.

But we had great teachers. I wonder if before, or since, the school has assembled a stronger faculty. Al Stearns seemed to personify the school. He was then at the height of his powers, and when he preached at vespers even the mavericks among us felt the radiance of that personality. Perhaps most of us looked at him too uncritically, but it is well for a school to have its headmaster for a hero. Our teachers, for the most part, were the best of the old tradition. We have but to think of Zeus Benner in Greek, Forbes in Latin, Freeman in American History, Leonard and Fuess in English, and Church in German, and at least a dozen others whose luster would put them with that galaxy. They set rigorous standards.

The school did no nursing of boys who for some reason or other failed to meet standards---perfectly fair but perhaps brutal. At the beginning of each term we checked off the names of boys who had been separated. What happened to them we never knew. Those of us who survived grew in strength. Almost without exception we found at least freshman year at college easier than senior year at school, as Andover students still do.

Like all youth we were conformists, particularly in matters of dress. As we straggled from the dormitories in the morning to get a hasty breakfast at the beanery before 7:45 chapel, at least 19 out of 20 of us had hair parted precisely in the middle. Half of us would be wearing knickers and golf socks. The plus-four fad came later. On a slushy or rainy day we wore galoshes, but by an iron rule of dress they were never buckled. The shirt with the attached collar was just beginning to be accepted. Most of us wore detachable collars, some soft, but they were usually starched and stiff. There was certainly none of the present informality in dress. We all used neckties and wore full suits, with waistcoats.

After breakfast we filed into chapel with reasonable quiet. On the platform sat the venerable Mr. McCurdy, and after his tragic death, Pap Eaton. As part of the service, Al Stearns would usually brief us on the news of the day, heavily editorialized in favor of what we would now call old-guard Republicanism. Then the round of classes. We all took English, a modern language, mathematics, history, a science and either Latin or Greek, or both. We had little time for the few purely elective courses.

After lunch at the beanery came sports. For the nonathletes they were fun but, unlike our classes, sometimes gave us a chance to cut corners. I remember the exquisite excitement four of us went through one winter term. We were supposed to be doing something in gym. The first day Monty Peck lined us up by eight-man squads. Attendance was to be taken by having the squad leader report at lineup before class. There were four of us left to form a sixth squad. The inspiration during exercise, the whispered conspiracy, the tension as we decided to cut the next gym period. One of us sauntered casually on the balcony at roll call. One by one the squads reported. "Fifth squad all present" "All right," said Monty. "Today I want ------------------------------------------." And for the rest of that term we cut gym, taking turns to check with Miss Whitney at the Registrar's office to see if any cuts came in. We lived with a sense of danger and excitement that winter. We were beating the system.

Classes again from 4 to 6. Then dinner. Study period began at 8, and every man was in his dormitory. In some dorms, inspection was sporadic; in some, regular. Hook Stearns in Bishop often inspected promptly at 8, all dressed up for the evening, and we knew he was gone until midnight. Occasionally, some of us slipped out just for derring-do, but there was really no place to go or anything to do outside. So we would congregate in various rooms. Perhaps two or three would crouch into a fireplace with cigarettes or pipes, carefully blowing smoke up the chimney. We played bridge but mostly we had bull sessions on sex, athletics, and occasionally religion.

I guess athletics was our chief topic, as we figured the chances of each of our teams against Exeter. There were giants in the land in those days. Willie Wingate, barking those crisp signals, twice led the football team to victory over Exeter; Dan Allen and Alex Sayles were both superb performers in several sports; Charlie Watson and Roger Haviland dominated interscholastic tennis. In track it seemed no meet was complete without a school, if not an interscholastic, record broken. Fritz Avery in the high hurdles, Hoddy Cole and Whitey Lewis in the low hurdles, Bob Allen in the half and quarter, Wienieke in the broad jump, Healy in the discus, and others broke records, some of them several times. And young Charlie Borah was beginning his glowing athletic career at the school.

It is hard to reminisce about Andover without allowing the span of more than three decades to blur the picture. Memory softens hard lines. The man who recalls his adolescence as a golden age has mercifully forgotten the tensions and the interior agonies that are inevitably part of the transition from childhood to manhood. In the close association of school we could buttress each other through this period, and grow up together. The loyalties engendered then will remain.

We can well be proud of our generation at Andover. The notes in the alumni magazine indicate we haven't done so badly since; nor has the school. Now when we go back for a visit we find the physical facilities transformed rather than improved. A few of us, either because our own sons have been at Andover or because of alumni service, have had the privilege of observing today's Andover more closely. The academic program has changed with the times and in the right direction. The present faculty is extraordinarily able, even though to us they and their brilliant headmaster seem so very young. A major change is the present concern for the individual boy and his proper guidance. We were in the sink or swim days. The swimmers among us report on the success of such a method. The sinkers are silent. Today's school has an extended sense of responsibility. In all ways I am convinced it is a better school. Andover gathers strength with age.