period when by reason of the size of the College, its multifold activities, and the increased interest in observing and recording its phenomena, we are actually embarrassed by the richness of our material. Space does not permit us even to enumerate all those erratic geniuses who, though now gone to their reward, still linger in living memory. We can only hold up a jewel here and there that flashed in the light of other days.
There was George Smythe, keeper of the boat-house and confidant of all rowing men; so that when he afterwards joined the Cambridge police he was accustomed on Commencement Day to slap the returning alumnus on the back, whether bishop, judge, or ambassador, and accost each as “Jack,” “Bill,” or “Fatty,” to the bewilderment of all beholders.[1]
There was the taciturn and inexorable Jones, a chronometer on two legs, trudging through the cosmos insensible to space, matter, motion, weight, relativity, or any other of its elements except time; who in more than half a century’s ringing of the college bell never deviated the fraction of a second from the hour appointed.[2]
There was Daniel Pratt, the Great American Traveller, in battered silk hat and customary suit of solemn
