Homer at Harvard

Homer at Harvard

Harvard's busy old President Abbott Lawrence Lowell proved to his own satisfaction last week that cultured conversation, the hope of Harvard's house-planners, is burgeoning at Cambridge. Addressing 300 freshmen on The Democracy of the House Plan, he said: "I went to Dunster House tonight . . . went to a table where there were two fellows and dined with them ... I didn't ask them their names nor they mine. We discussed Homer, Virgil and Milton. Afterwards I felt I had been discussing subjects with which I am none too familiar. I get that way by keeping constantly in touch with administrative matters."

"A deplorable condition!" grumbled Manhattan Colyumist Heywood Broun.

"President Lowell thinks he wasn't recognized. That may be so. Still, they couldn't have thought he was Butch Mc-Guiness, the hammer thrower. At least the students knew that here was an old gentleman of academic demeanor who would have nothing worthwhile to contribute if the talk veered around to the relative merits of Camera and Jack Shar- key. If A. Lawrence Lowell wants to know what students talk about he'd better send a dictaphone next time and stay away.. . . He might even hear something about A. Lawrence Lowell."

Because Servants Fell Down

A little, untidy, white-cassocked priest bustled frantically about a farmhouse in Connecticut. The dream--a high-church Episcopal school to educate boys of modest means--for which he had abandoned ordinary parish work, had seemed wholly accomplished yesterday; now everything appeared to have gone wrong. True, he had this rented house in the beautiful Berkshires, a staff of three masters, a family of four Negro servants, an enrolment of 20 boys. But the boys were beginning to arrive, there was much to be done, and the father of the Negro family had left in a huff. Out to the kitchen bustled White Cassock to tell the harassed Negro mother: "All we wish for supper is some nice corn-cakes. . . ."

That was in September 1906.

Many years afterward he recounted: "She fell down on the job. I was forced to cook the first supper myself. The son literally fell down ... so the charter scholars waited on themselves."

For nearly 25 years succeeding scholars have waited on themselves, made their beds, done the chores. For thus was born what is known throughout educational society as "the Kent Idea." The school then started was Kent School, at Kent, Conn. Its white-cassocked founder: Father Frederick Herbert Sill, one of the first members of the Episcopal Order of the Holy Cross. His initial capital: $250.

Father Sill had had a brief, brilliant career. Born in Manhattan (March 10, 1874), he went to Columbia University where he was editor-in-chief of the Spectator, manager and coxswain of the 1895 Varsity crew which first brought honor to Columbia at Poughkeepsie. (In 1927 Columbia oarsmen voted him an honorary degree: Doctor of Rowing.) During college he was also a reporter (New York Sun). Later he was a theological student, a minister in Baltimore.

His life thereafter has been the life of Kent School, where he has built up his system of student self-government and student selfhelp. Sixth formers use "the Pater's" study as their club. When they sit listening to his slow, deep voice they feel the worth of the responsibility he assigns them as prefects, as supervisors of the two daily "Job Assemblies," where they see to it that the school's work--scrubbing, window-washing, leaf-raking, everything but cooking--is performed properly. Four or five times a term a whole form gets a holiday, goes out to work on the school farm (one of Connecticut's finest) or to unload a carload of coal--anything that needs to be done.

Even more widely famed now than the "Kent Idea" are the Kent crews. Father Sill took advantage of the nearby sweep of Housatonic River to teach his charges what he knows about rowing. The school has grown to have 286 pupils, 20 masters, $1,000,000 in property, so nowadays there are often twelve shells on the river at once. White Cassock (outside the classroom some call him "The Great White Tent," but most, respectfully, "The Old Man") coaches the first two crews. Sometimes, in black canonicals, he doubles as the crew's deep-bellowing coxswain. His first crews compete in the college class--against the Harvard 150-pounders, the Yale and Princeton freshmen. In 1927 and 1930 they rowed in the British Hen- ley, first U. S. boarding school crews to do so (TIME, July 14). Two of the shells were given Kent by Lord Rothermere, famed Hearst of England. Because no hired coach is permitted at Kent, the coaching is all done by Kent's busy young teachers. White Cassock used to coach football, and until recently, hockey. (He is still a member of the Hockey Advisory Committee of the National Collegiate Athletic Association.) Raccoon-coated, he had to shuffle about on the ice; he has never learned to skate.

Meanwhile the school has turned out many a notable graduate, including: Poet Robert Silliman Hillyer, Playwright-Direc- tor Worthington C. Miner, Vice President Edward T. Gushee of Detroit Edison Co., Vice President Henry T. Skelding of Guaranty Trust Co., Editor Albert G. Lanier of St. Nicholas, Novelist James Gould Cozzens. So enthusiastically did they spread the Kent gospel that by 1923 the enrolment demand had exceeded Father Sill's conception of what a school body should be. Nearby, under his guidance, was founded South Kent School, with one of his graduates, Samuel Slater Bartiett, as headmaster. First South Kent senior class was graduated in 1927. Both schools still cater to families of little money,* Kent proper sometimes takes pupils free. Last week, on "The Old Man's" 57th birthday, a testimonial dinner was given for him at the Hotel Commodore in Manhattan. Joined to honor him were the Church (Presiding Bishop James DeWolf Perry of the Protestant Episcopal Church), the Universities (Dean Christian Gauss, representing President John Grier Hibben of Princeton), Kent alumni, Kent parents & friends (including Vice President Charles W. Appleton of General Electric Co., President Frederick Paul Keppel of Carnegie Corp.). Many a guest was too old to have known, as a school boy, Father Sill's influence. But all joined, as the dinner announcement stated: In grateful recognition of twenty-five years of devoted service to his ideals: simplicity of life, self-sacrifice and directness of pur- pose.

Hopkins On Raiding

A footnote to last month's liquor raids at the University of Michigan (TIME, Feb. 23) was offered last week by President Ernest Martin Hopkins of Dartmouth College. To Dartmouth alumni in Chicago he said: "There seems to be a great discussion about the raiding of college fraternity houses. They shouldn't raid college fraternities unless they are going to raid country clubs and other clubs on the outside. The two stand in exactly the same position and I notice whenever I enter a club that a man who really wants a drink invariably gets it.

"I don't think college men are drinking more or less now than they did before Prohibition. The only difference lies in their abandonment of ales and beers for hard liquor."

P: Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity at the Uni-versity of Kentucky last week ousted Mc-Chord Christie, 23-year-old senior. He had snooped, tattled, aided Federal agents in raiding a college rooming house and a student-patronized speakeasy. It was pointed out that McChord Christie had himself once engaged in legging. Said he: "I am on the other side now, though, and I am not going to stop until I have cleaned up college bootlegging in Lexington."

*A Harvard student in 1906--1910, Colyumist Broun flunked French, was not graduated.

*Kent's average tuition: fixed price: $900.

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