Mt. Moosilauke (1868) - Dartmouth College
". . . Most colleges had humble origins though they don't admit it in their bulletins or catalogues, and it's a healthy thing for colleges and individuals to have brought before them some memories of the days when sophistication was still in its Age of auto-less and radio-less Innocence. And so with us. In 1868 every man chopped his own wood. . .
I entered college in the autumn of 1868, and with exception of the years from 1872 to 1879 I have know the College ever since. If occasionally I cut out from my memory the intervening years of slow change one or the other of these Dartmouths, the old or the new, is appallingly strange. Indeed their identity is not the same. I am shedding no tears. I am sorry for the loss of the small college, however, it may be counter-balanced. I regret the increasing tyranny of Things. I hope and believe that high thinking has not gone away with plain living. But growth, elimination, change are laws of life.
One interesting custom must not be forgotten. In the fall - and that suggests apples - thesophomores went forth in divisions of eight or ten for required field work in surveying. These were days of abundant fun and not wholly without benefit to the high boys who were director and register of their divisions and allowed to do all the work while the low boys foraged and rested.
One more very important peculiarity of the time which was the occasion of many differences from the present situation was the existence of The Chandler School of Science and the Arts as a wholly separate institution in terms of admission, curriculum, administration, fraternities. This was completely merged into the courses of Dartmouth College in the nineties much to the advantage of all.
The unfurnished condition was not peculiar to our college.But merely for illustration - the College had no auditorium, athletic equipment, conveniences for hospitality at Commencement or other times, messengers from the outside world to the various departments, student laboratories, officers of administration, rest years for professors; and the differences in curriculum can only be grasped by comparative study of the catalogues of 1868 and 1928 or others of about the same years.
The present generation thinks of those ancients as unfortunately inferior in not having the advantages and privileges of today. But not so; they missed no advantages of which they were unaware. What if they couldn't drive a motor car? Life was just as full of reality and zest. They made lifelong friendships. They used their time as well as the generation of today, though differently. They went out able to do their full share in the developing years to come. . . ."
From "Dartmouth - As It Was Sixty Years Ago" by Prof. Edwin J. Bartlett, Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, 1929.
