I SUPPOSE it is only natural when one is asked, as we have been, to recall our days at Andover that the trivial and personal reminiscences come to our minds first. For example, I have a vivid memory of the awkward situation one of my classmates found himself in one night in 1923. This particular gentleman, dressed in a tuxedo, was hanging by his hands from the rear gutter of Clement House about eleven P.M. just prior to dropping to the ground and taking off for the evening when he looked in the window and found "Lightfoot" French's face pressed against the glass watching him---we bade this individual a fond good-bye the next morning.

We remember too our pranks---the stupid stunts like those I have to deal with from time to time in my present position as a Headmaster. One Sunday afternoon in 1924 two of us lugged back to Andover Cottage a 100-pound window weight that we had salvaged from an abandoned factory. The next couple of hours we spent trying to drop it through the floor to the basement by hauling it up to the third floor and heaving it down the stairwell. Had we succeeded, Al Stearns would have offered prayers on Monday morning for the recently departed "Base and Sordid Souls." I do not know today, anymore than I did then, why we did this; but I am sure that in dealing now with meaningless student pranks I am more lenient when I recall my own aberrations.

Then there come to mind our memories of the members of the Faculty, a stern, forbidding group as we recall them and yet so often kind.

The rough words of George Hinman gargled through a mouthful of pencil, clenched tightly in his teeth, still ring in my ears. "Mr. Beardsley, will you do us the kindness to recite?---Mr. Allen is too yellow to prepare his lesson and won't be with us long!" The basement of Graves Hall holds terror for me even today when I recall my trembling fear at this rough treatment. But, of course, we did dig out our Latin---and by ourselves. The days of intimidation have given way to the days of permissiveness, but I am not sure that the lessons are learned any better.

Whatever lessons of accuracy I absorbed were not gathered where they perhaps should have been, in "Drip" Newton's geometry class. But I do recall one long, painful afternoon when Drip, as Faculty Adviser to PBX, worked with me as treasurer to hunt down a missing penny in my accounts. The need and value of accuracy were deeply impressed.

Many were the pleasant Wednesday afternoons I spent with "Zeus" Benner sitting in the third row center seeing the "best show" in Boston and then enjoying a good dinner at Durgin Park, before returning to Andover Hill. I gained much from my hours spent with this scholarly gentleman.

One of the lessons that has stayed with me over the years since Andover days came from being on Shep's track squad, where we soon learned that no race is won or lost until the tape is broken. "Making a strong finish" and "carrying through to the end" are words I am sure my students get tired of hearing me use, but I firmly believe that lessons like these often come from the athletic field and from inspiring coaches like Ray Shepard.

There is no doubt that the Andover of 35 years ago was a fine school with a strong faculty and with the vision to progress. But as one who has worked in boarding schools over the past 30 years and who has been privileged to serve on John Kemper's Alumni Educational Policy Committee, I have watched Andover become an increasingly greater school over the last few decades.

Phillips Academy today has a more magnificent physical plant than we knew; it is a bigger school than we knew; it is even a more expensive school than we knew. But these are not important differences. Following the critical war years under Jack Fuess, the Trustees selected a young stranger to lead P.A. forward; and this John Kemper has done. The school has become more national in character, encouraging and attracting able students from all over the world and offering an Andover education to any qualified student regardless of his financial status. This is a tremendous step forward! The Academy still attracts and holds on its faculty some of the ablest teachers in secondary education, men who are recognized leaders in their fields, men who pioneered new courses and new techniques, and men who hold the Andover academic standing high among the schools of America. These are strong words, but Phillips Academy is a strong school with a strong leader. I am proud to be numbered among its alumni.

I ENTERED Andover in the autumn of 1921, arriving in knickerbockers, high shoes, and a cap. This was a modish outfit at Durham (N.H.) Junior High but it immediately set me slightly apart from the rest of Andover, and I guess I've been slightly apart from it ever since. Mostly what sets me apart now is that I admit to having detested the school while I was there.

At my 30th reunion I had the honor of speaking at the Alumni Luncheon, and I referred to the "yearning which all Andover men have in varying degrees for the opportunity sometime, somewhere, to get up and talk back to the teachers and tyrants of their youth." Blessed though I had been by this juiciest of opportunities, I turned craven; too many of the faces I remembered so vividly had vanished forever. Quarrels must end at the grave. My uncharitable thoughts were out of place. I was for a moment almost an orthodox sentimental alumnus back on the Hill on a lovely day in June.

The mood was fleeting, and I resolved my predicament by promulgating Paine's Law: that one's appreciation of Andover increases with the square of the distance from it, measured in years. Worked out at my age, this formula yields a very high order of appreciation, which indeed I have.

The Andover of the early years of the Golden Twenties was the "old Andover." Boys were no longer birched, it is true, but it was known as a tough school. And it was. It was not a good school for the "poorly adjusted" boy, or even the conspicuously gifted boy. But for a normal, competitive youngster who could take it, who could cope with its college-like size, its utterly impersonal attitude, its rigid rules and standards, for that boy Andover could provide a remarkable education.

The faculty of that day was studded with "characters." Some were unforgettable and inspiring teachers. Some were dull but diligent. Some were exceedingly arbitrary. One of my classmates, who had learned French before he learned English, who read Molière before he read Shakespeare, was forced to start afresh in French I or whatever the beginning class was called. He was still fuming about it at his 30th reunion.

And some of the faculty, to be generous, were highly eccentric. They were permitted, perhaps even encouraged, to develop their eccentricities, not all of which were particularly attractive. The slyness, the hounding and bullying, the petty cruelties, the bad tempers, seemed to me then, and still do, an inexcusable aspect of the Andover of the early Twenties. Yet like the fraternity system, a pernicious institution, the eccentrics were tolerated for years.

This is not to suggest that the students were all little Galahads. Respect for the arts was nil. The crap games were monstrous. There was a strong undercurrent of anti-Semitism which at least once a year would break out in really vicious incidents. The amount of socially acceptable shoplifting, particularly from visiting haberdashers, was appalling. The school narrowly missed a first-class scandal on one occasion when a visiting haberdasher was robbed of virtually his entire inventory. Politicking was more highly developed than anything I ever saw at college. To win an election, boys would sit down and learn the first name of every student in school, no mean feat of memory, considering that Andover is not a cozy little place where everybody knows everybody.

Andover was rough as well as tough. There were still veterans of World War I in school when I arrived, and jolly fellows they were. Some of my strongest memories, regrettably, are associated with illicit and forbidden activities of a kind peculiar to that period. The taxi had recently been invented and Prohibition had followed. F. Scott Fitzgerald was the newest literary discovery, and there was a best seller actually called Flaming Youth. For two years, with friends who have become among other things bankers and monks, we got to know something of the night-life of Boston, the roadhouses of the Newburyport Turnpike, and the sleazier speaks of Lawrence and even Lowell. Some latent prudence suggested that we had played our luck long enough, for suddenly we stopped in Upper Middle Year. I recollect the harshness with which Al Stearns's denunciation of the "base and sordid" grated on the ears of a skull still splitting from ether beer. And so, mirabile dictu, we graduated.

An understanding of how good our education had been first began to dawn the first year in college; college seemed remarkably easy after four years on the Hill. Too easy, in fact. If you had gone to Andover you had been to an educational institution, not just a boys' school. Among other things you knew how to study---why, I'm not quite sure, for certainly, in those days at least, no teacher deigned to give you even a hint in the matter. But somehow you learned. You learned how to learn. And you never forgot.

What difference whether you liked Andover or not? You got a better education at Andover than you got at Yale---which, to be fair to President Griswold's institution was not wholly Yale's fault.* If I may quote myself again, I said in 1955:

"When you view the state of American education ... it seems to me that the independent schools emerge as one of the few hopeful elements. The crisis of quality can only be met by conserving quality. That the good independent schools have done, and they should be proud of it---Andover in particular.

"Over its long, luminous history Andover has produced leaders in many areas of national life and many of its graduates were---and are---leaders in American education. Perhaps it should rededicate itself to a new effort in this direction.

"In the years ahead Andover can be a great source of inspiration for a generation of men whose life effort might help importantly to lead American education out of its wilderness of mediocrity. That is a task worthy of Andover. That is the task which I hope Andover will undertake."

* From personal observation as a classmate: Dr. Griswold's devotion to the books as an undergraduate was also something short of complete.

THAT'S WHAT the calendar says. But the calendar must be off. It's still all too close for that; the memories too fresh: Of Georgie Hinman's fabled Latin classes. Georgie's rages. Georgie tearing off his necktie, stamping his wooden leg, chewing pencils in two and throwing the ends across the classroom, while fullbacks blanched and shot-putters cringed. No one ever mistook Georgie for an apostle of progressive education, but when you'd been through his mill you were as toughened a campaigner as any of Caesar's legionnaires.

Of the first cigarette of my life, in the old grill in the basement of Peabody. And no one told me until it was too late that you didn't clamp them between your teeth, as I had watched my father do with his cigars.

Of sundry cigarettes thereafter, when my technique had improved---not only in the smoking but in getting them up the fireplace (a piece of used gum would hold one nicely) if there were ominous footsteps on the dorm stairs.

Of my father, during a fall visit, joining a touch-football game and neglecting to take off his pearl tie-pin. Came a pass, a catch high on the chest, and goodbye pin. (For the benefit of latter-day treasure hunters, I might add that the game was played on the field that used to be behind Johnson Hall, and for all I know the pearl is still there. It's a good one, too.)

Of life's darkest hour (barring none); coming up from the North Station on the Boston & Maine at the end of Christmas vacation. Night, cold, sleet, soot, gaslight. The evening before your girl had suggested that maybe it was all a mistake. And tomorrow morning ---Hinman.

Of life's brightest hour (or pretty close to it): seeing your first short story in the glory of print in the Mirror. Perhaps it wasn't too good a story; but at least---this being in avant avant-garde days---it was full of capitals and punctuation.

Of the spring prom and an acrid debate over whether a new dance called the Charleston could be tolerated in P.A.'s ivied halls. The Powers, as I recall, decided no---but they hadn't yet heard of the Black Bottom.

Of being goalie on the soccer team and starting in the big game against Worcester. (For some reason, Exeter didn't seem to play soccer in those days.) I had played full-time through every game of the season and was therefore pretty upset when, after ten minutes, a Chinese classmate called Yuan came out to replace me. A while later, sitting disconsolate on the bench, I see Coach Jim Riley staring at me. "What are you doing here?" he asks. "You took me out," I answer. "No, I didn't," says he . . . . Yuan's subsequent explanation: "I got tired of sitting."

Of senior year at last, and all the fine new buildings going upjust in time for us not to use them. There was even an incredible rumor that in a certain George Washington Hall there would be an auditorium where movies, no less, would be shown on Saturday nights.

Of the great dilemma when you had one cut left toward the end of the term: should it be chapel or geometry. Once it was both, and the consequences weren't so good.

Of senior Latin in Pearson Hall, and Charlie Forbes (no Hinman he) gently untangling the underbrush of Vergil's Aeneid. What was it that Queen Dido said as Aeneas left her and took off again on his wanderings? . . . "Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit. Someday, perhaps, it will give you pleasure to remember these things ......."

And it does.

THE REMINISCENCES of one Andover generation must always bring up memories of "Georgie" Hinman. His terrible temper, legendary eccentricities and unusual excellence as a teacher put him in any schoolboy bible---perhaps as a personal "devil," but at least he was definitely a remembered character. (I know one distinguished, confident and wealthy member of the bar and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of a great institution who had to spend an extra year at Andover simply because he was rendered totally incoherent before Georgie's inchoate wrath.) Under our "modern" standards Georgie would never be permitted to teach, but under those same standards Winston Churchill would have been barred from any future because of his deplorable inability to understand elementary school English grammar. Fortunately both found their careers and fame in a less meticulous age.

Everybody remembers that "Georgie" in his tantrums violently gnawed and bit through his pencils, caromed erasers off the duller domes of his numbed audience, and frequently ejected half the class, bestowing on them cartloads of demerits and full passports to dismissal from school. To be kicked out of "Georgie's" class before the end of the hour was par for the course. But my little brother, Kurt, established a new record in the realm of demerit. I don't know the details but by some mischance my brother arrived rather early and somehow managed to get himself thrown out by "Georgie" before the starting bell for the hour had rung. After his rude dismissal he encountered his oncoming classmates entering the slaughter house. Kurt wrote philosophically to his parents: "I was going while they were coming!"

WHEN MY OLD English teacher invited me to participate in this volume of essays about Andover, I hesitated on two counts. First, I was only a one-year boy, always something of an anachronism in a school like Andover and certainly a very narrow vantage point from which to appraise the school. And secondly, my professional life so far has been spent as a college teacher in a university whose connection with the Academy continues so close that it is likely to distort the judgement in another way. To disentangle how I remember I felt about Andover thirty years ago from my ongoing reactions to its graduates coming through Yale today is well nigh impossible. But my protestations to the good Doctor had no effect; so with the meekness that is so easily recovered in the presence of one's former school masters I agreed to do my best.

May I begin by stating unequivocally that Andover gave me a first-class academic preparation for college. And mine was not the typical fifth-year problem---a glittering Academy icing for a more-or-less substantial high school cake. I had spent the four previous years in four different schools in this country and abroad, a rewarding Odyssey but one lacking sustained demand and disciplined purpose. At Andover I suddenly met that vital combination of able students plus dedicated teachers, and, fortunately for my own future, happened to be ready to profit from it.

Some of the teaching I received at Andover was sheer inspiration, that opened up windows for me which I hope will never be closed. Many of us who chanted Vergil in the late afternoons in Pearson Hall to the benign baton of Charley Forbes caught then our first true echoes of sound and meter. Yet other instructors were more drill masters in an older tradition who exercised our minds and disciplined our habits even if they left us no great love for their particular subjects. Yet I am equally grateful to both types of teachers, almost wistfully so in these days of the permissive jungle.

From where I sit Andover still seems to be performing well this first and all-important function, with as high a proportion of inspiring teachers as any headmaster can hope to discover. Could it do a better job? At times I think I sense that the life of the mind is as much on the defensive at Andover, in relation to that clamoring host of extra-curricular attractions that compete for the students' energy and time, as it so frequently is in our universities and colleges. Either the Andover graduate too often emerges well trained but not excited, or the colleges are still failing to push him ahead as fast as they should,---to tax fully his capacities from the start of freshman year instead of allowing him a fatal moment of relaxation, which may permit him to slip off again into those greener pastures which he learned to savor at the Academy. When it admitted him, the college could have no doubt of his intellectual potential. The doubt concerned only the degree to which he was conditioned in advance properly to exploit it.

The other aspect of Andover which I recall most vividly was the rather unique social ethos. Perhaps I was peculiarly sensitive to this, for I had been annually cast in the role of new boy. Andover was not the most friendly school I had known. Some vestigial remnants of a more robust welcome---the Beanie and the Prep-Parade---still survived, but none of the more artificially-saccharine versions of today's Orientation Week or Welcome Wagon had yet appeared. Yet I was entering a world, a little world perhaps, whose structure and indeed values were clearly recognizable and generally accepted. From the start one sensed a sturdy egalitarianism of the best sort, wherein each stood on his own feet and was measured against a set of standards solidly rooted in the school itself. Only in college did I eventually learn of the not-inconsiderable differences in background and wealth among my Andover classmates.

But even thirty years ago this microcosm of the great world was being invaded, especially from above. Though we still mixed the flour paste ourselves, on the floor of Bill Smyth's room, for the weekly mailing of the Phillipian, the paper itself was becoming more and more a gawky shadow of the News or the Crimson and less of a school newspaper. And it is my impression that this tendency has grown with the years, that Andover and other schools have found themselves increasingly invaded by the patterns, mores, and attitudes of the college world, just as the colleges themselves have become submerged in the world around them.

There is no question of Andover not doing something for its students. The question is whether it is doing all it possibly can, or, better, whether it is providing the environment where they can attain the greatest possible growth. With today's competition to get into college, Andover must continually ask itself whether it has truly educated its charges, properly developed their intellectual interests, given them both acceleration and direction? Or is it turning out well-drilled machines, ticking over nicely when carefully primed but not heading anywhere? Has Andover taken full advantage of its unique opportunity (far greater than that of the college) to establish and confirm good habits so they became true standards? Or has it been content to be too much like a college in big things and too unlike the college in little ones?

For a school to maintain its proper individuality today is not easy. Just as it may become too like the world of the college when it allows preparation for college to monopolize its attention, so it may become too separate, too different, too unworldly. And its graduates may lose their moorings later on or end up in that most unhappy state of chronic nostalgia, with their heads firmly screwed on backwards as they long for an Eden that never was. Andover graduates, in my experience, never fall into this wallow of sentimentality, but rather see the school for what it really was-the single most formative influence on them at one critical period in their personal, spiritual, and intellectual growth.

YES, ONE remembers Andover, and is reminded. There were the dormitories, the classrooms, the eating clubs, and the playing fields. There were George Washington Hall and Phillips Hall that were new in my day, and a tradition that carried back to the time of these men for whom the proud buildings were named. The atmosphere of Andover was intangible, but all of us knew it every minute and everywhere we walked beneath the tall elms.

I remember the qualities of men: the smiling goodness in the face of Charlie Forbes as he taught us Latin, re-weaving joy and beauty out of the lines of Vergil. It was an extraordinary experience, coming to his class as I did with a conviction that like "all Gaul" Latin and I were divided into three parts, with my two-thirds looking out the window. "This is poetry!" I still hear him, and Vergil.

I still hear too the unruffled voice of the housemaster in Day Hall as he left the room where we sat by the fireplace in confident innocence. He stopped by the door, paused: "By the way, has anyone been smoking?" The penalties were imposed and taken without hysterics, except possibly by parents.

When we sat side-by-side as students in chapel we were given a feeling of belonging, not simply to the Academy (I think) but rather to what Andover represented: a coming together of men drawn from the nation as a whole and representing not just America but fellow mankind. We were introduced to each other within this larger unit, made clearer than we could possibly have known it in our native towns. We came as strangers and with a certain anonymity. We were free to belong to the race of man.

We were free even to fail in our responsibilities. Many of us at least faltered; I certainly did. When I realize now how closely my later life has been bound to the classroom, it is a little ironic but at least salutary to remember that there were only a few weeks of my year at Andover when I was free from either academic or disciplinary probation. I would pass half my courses only to fail the rest, then work hard only to reverse the balance. It is a privilege to be free to fail, when one can be equally free to learn to stand up again with the others at the end to receive his diploma. I was helped to learn.

I sing of arms and the men, then, as I knew them. And I have been faithful, in my fashion (though this was a line I learned to quote later).

In the spring of my senior year the dramatic view to the mountains at the west of the campus was open. The preparations for the Sesquicentennial engaged the school. Overnight came the altogether splendid emergence of an immense magic carpet of green laid sod by sod for the feet of the President of the United States and the eyes of the undergraduates. It was good to see when I was at Andover last spring that trees had been newly lopped and the view to the west was open again. Like the plans for the new Andover Program, it was a sign that each generation needs its vista and should have its own magic carpet. Yet we who have known Andover will never become strangers to her or to each other.

There never really is a break between one's school-life and afterwards, no matter how far behind one the school seems to have slipped. To revisit Andover even in memory is to let the same elms reframe experience. To have served on the Alumni Council, as it has just been my privilege, is to be assured that among the men who as administrators and faculty are the Academy's strength, there is still the same devotion to beauty and learning and character which a great school must have, and for which Andover has always stood.

A FEW YEARS ago the Phillipian, of which I am a former associate editor, asked me to give---I use the verb advisedly---an account of my life as a growing artist at Andover. No doubt the boys expected something racy and bohemian, along the lines of Churchill's running up tuck tabs at Harrow and Kipling's raising childish hell at United Services Coll. I forget what I gave them. The stuff was probably lively enough, suitable to the tabloid market. It wasn't the facts. I was too much astonished for facts---astonished by the proposition that I had been a growing artist at the time in question, rather than a growing con man and a growing expense to my kinsfolk.

Then, later, I realized that I had been, at least, a growing writer. The fact was, I now remembered, that I had turned pro at Andover. And this point, I saw, had been decisive in my life. Once a boy gets money for a piece of writing, there can be no turning back. There can be no thought of doing anything else, except perhaps, during the more mature years, of cutting one's throat.

It wasn't the Phillipian that turned me pro. As far as I know, this publication has never veered from its austere policy of rewarding prose with a handshake or a kick in the pants. It was the Potpourri that shaped me. In the spring of 1929, the editor of the yearbook, who subsequently became a Texas cattle baron, promised to give me twenty dollars plus five per cent of the profits if I would juice up the back of the book with a few gags. What's more, to the best of my recollection, he eventually paid me in full. I like to think that I was the only P.A. undergraduate---up to that time, anyway---who ever earned an honest buck by the sweat of his typewriter. (I throw out "A Boy's-Eye View of the Arctic", by K. L. Rawson, also '29. This work was published when its author was still a card-carrying infant prodigy, before he came off the ice-pack to Andover.)

That spring, my senior spring, was nirvana to me in more ways than one. The earlier, formative years on the Hill were less literary. They were full of the usual struggle for survival, the process of wit-sharpening to keep from being outwitted. My days were dominated by the competition, which was formidable: Al Stearns, then at the height of his form; Henry Gold, the tailor, who visited Main Street once a week; Mike Sides, who sniffed breaths inside the chapel door at Sunday vespers; and the faculty patrol outside the movie-house near the station. (I'm sorry to say that my movie-going days postdated John McNulty's career there. McNulty, later the historian of Third Avenue, New York, used to come over from Lawrence to accompany Westerns on the movie-house piano.)

The early going, as I say, was rough and formative. One Sunday, Al Stearns bounded down from the chapel pulpit and grabbed my arm in a grip of steel. He'd been watching my work throughout the services. "Spit out that gum!" he shouted, his eyes flashing. It was something like Jehovah intervening in a dime-limit stud game. Henry Gold made it hard for me too. His showroom was dark, and I tended toward night-blindness. Once, after the final fitting of what I had thought was a natty but sober set of threads, I walked out into the sunlight and was greeted by raucous cries from classmates. "The gym is on fire!" somebody yelled. "Here comes the hook-and-ladder!" Looking down at myself, I saw that Henry had indeed sold me a suit of fireman's blue.

But it must have been these hardships that brought on the artistic harvest. My wits became so sharp that in the final spring I got myself elected manager of golf, which was the nearest thing to a post in lotus-land that the school provided. The first day's practice gave me a lifelong allergy to watching people swing golf clubs. I spent the remaining afternoons on the clubhouse veranda, with a glass of lemonade in my hand, ripening. On Saturday evenings, there was a further chance for bloom. With two other rising talents---one was the aforesaid Rawson, the arctic author, the other became Samuel S. Caldwell, the salt merchant---I drifted regularly down to the Greasy Spoon, to eat steak, canned peas, and French-fried potatoes and commune about life and literature.

It was then that the Potpourri editor, jingling with cash, tapped me on the shoulder; and I was ready. As noted, the editor, name of Thomas Lasater, went on to found an empire by breeding cattle. I was the first writer he had bred, so to speak, and he seemed to find considerable hope for future mutations in the result. When the stuff was in (and the sales had been cashed), he and a couple of colleagues threw a night-stalking party in my honor. I mention this party on the assumption that there is a statute of limitations on night-stalking at Andover after thirty years. We stalked a bottle of Volstead rum, and went to Revere Beach by cab to ride the roller-coaster.

I survived the first wild ride in fair condition, and started to follow my friends out of the roller-coaster car. But they, seeing that my reactions were a little slow, bought me a ticket for another ride. I went around again, involuntarily. Each time a ride ended, they bought me another ticket. After approximately six rides, they took me back to the Hill and smuggled me into the hay. My work for their entertainment, they told me, was part of my services to the Potpourri, and would give me additional writing material.

It seems to be true, in short, that Andover prepared me to be a writer. I'm glad it didn't prepare me to be a financier. Shortly after old P.A. turned my class loose on the world, the stock market crashed with a bang, the depression set in, and no one had alibis but writers.

I ARRIVED at Andover on a cold, rainy, cheerless Sunday afternoon in September, 1929, to assume my duties as instructor in English and housemaster of Paul Revere Hall, the brand-new dormitory whose character and traditions I and my colleague in the north end of the building were to create and, presumably, perpetuate. I first saw the building from the unpaved and muddy road back of Day Hall. There it loomed, four stories high, above the quagmire later to be called Flagstaff Court. The present paths, the flagpole, the rows of shapely lindens, the teak benches were still in the architect's mind. Before my eyes there was only mud and a few crazy duck boards across the muddy lagoons. On my right the squat, squarish mass of the Commons, still a-building, reared its bulk above the mud. There was no approach to Paul Revere across the quagmire, and so I turned back to Salem Street, drove by the Commons, past a large white house beneath an elm, both long since removed, and up to the south entrance of Paul Revere Hall. The south door was locked; the mud made the north and west doors inaccessible, and so I drove to Samaritan House, the only other house whose location I knew, to see the Headmaster and report my plight. Samaritan House, where the Headmaster then lived, stood about where the portico of the Chapel now stands. Dr. Stearns was not at home, but the maid who answered the door thought I might get a key to my dormitory from Mr. Hopper, who lived in Hayward House on Phillips Street. At Hayward House I encountered, not Mr. Hopper, but Miss Frost, librarian, who for reasons still not clear to me was occupying Hayward House for the year. Mr. Hopper, I learned, was living in Bancroft Hall. So to Bancroft I went. With the key which Mr. Hopper gave me I returned to Paul Revere, let myself in, and so became the first housemaster of Andover's newest dormitory. A week later Dirk van der Stucken took up residence in the north end and together we proctored that dormitory for the next eleven years.

My apartment was spacious and, in a dull way, attractive. There were two rooms and a bath. No kitchen, of course. For eleven years I broke the monotony of Commons fare by preparing occasional meals for my boys and myself over an electric hotplate set on the floor and afterwards washed the dishes in the bathtub. The living room was rather handsome, long and narrow, light, comfortable, well furnished with a conventional three-piece suite upholstered in a durable chocolate colored fabric reminiscent of Pullman car chairs. Everything was sturdy and durable: the long oak table, the oak desk, the two Windsor chairs. The one essential article the room lacked was a bookcase. There was not a shelf to put a book on, and I had some five hundred books in crates in the basement. There they remained until spring, when, yielding to my importunities, the authorities finally provided me with a handsome bookcase of oak which nicely matched the other furniture but held fewer than half my books. About a year later the school carpenters built in some shelves and at long last I gathered all my books about me.

The day after my arrival I reported to Mr. Leonard, chairman of the Department of English. He lived in Woods House, which then stood on the site now occupied by the north end of Chapel. Mr. and Mrs. Leonard had just returned from Europe and were busily unpacking their trunks. Mr. Leonard merely verified what I already knew: that I would teach sections of English 1 and 2 and a section of younger boys who had been referred to in the correspondence as sub-Juniors. Mr. Leonard sent me to Mr. Spencer, who had a kind of vague responsibility for English 1. He welcomed me to Andover, and named the text he used in his junior course. But the sub-Juniors were not his problem. Of what to do with them he had no more idea than I.

Probably few in Andover today have heard of the sub-Junior experiment. It has long since been forgotten. There had been some thought at the time, I believe, of making Andover a five-year school by adding a class below the junior class. So the sub-Junior class came into existence. Who suggested the unhappy name I don't know, but it was my responsibility to teach the group English. There were eight sub-Juniors, young, not very innocent, quite charming. I remember each boy's name and can recall his appearance: T. J. Beardsley, a slight, blond-haired boy who looked younger than he was; a stocky lad named M. H. Durston; a smiling, pleasant boy called W. F.Edmundson; and a well-mannered boy named E. C. Farrington, who always stood when he recited. There was also a tall awkward boy named W. T. Gardner. He was precocious, more mature than the others, and having lived in Europe, got along better with his teachers than with his fellows. Three others completed the group: O. H. Green, R. N. Richardson, son of Mrs. Theresa Richardson, who later succeeded Miss Frost as librarian, and a soft-spoken, gentle boy named F. K. Wallace. I liked these boys and enjoyed teaching them. All of them except Gardner, I think, graduated with the class of 1934. The bond I established with them must have been particularly tenuous, however, for I have seen only two of them since and these encounters were fortuitous. Ruddy Richardson I saw often because he lived in Andover. Bill Gardner I got to know well. He was interesting, companionable, and friendly. He used to read in my study and talk to me by the hour. I think he left Andover at the end of his lower middle year. For several years afterward he wrote to me, then the letters ceased, and I lost track of him until one night about ten years ago I met him on a New York subway. A tall man wearing a black astrakhan hat like Mr. Khrushchev's approached me and said, "Are you Emory Basford? I'm Bill Gardner. You taught me at Andover way back in 1929." But we had reached Times Square, and I had to get out. The train rattled away and I have not seen Bill Gardner since, though I have heard from him. From time to time he sends me handsomely printed excerpts from literature bearing the legend READING, by William Gardner, at the Elocution and Euruthmy Studio, 120 East 10th Street, New York City.

My attentions that year were divided between sub-Juniors and Seniors. Surprisingly, the Seniors were less of a joy than the sub-Juniors. Paul Revere housed fifty-four seniors, twenty-seven in each entry. They were distributed over four floors. No other dormitory had a fourth floor. My apartment was on the second floor, a strategic location for proctoring the floors immediately above and below but remote from the fourth floor, which was for that reason inclined to turbulence. I certainly did not hunger and thirst after finding things out, but I felt that I had to keep the house quiet at least during study hours, and so up those flights of stairs to the fourth floor I climbed a dozen times an evening. Not all housemasters took their duties as seriously as I did. Some were strict; some lenient; some indulgent; some indifferent. Men ran their houses about as they pleased. Some came in promptly at eight o'clock every evening, took the roll, and then disappeared. Others sat in their quarters all evening and never took the roll. It was rumored that some housemasters never ventured above the first floor, and that at least one never bothered to learn the names of all the boys in his house. The story circulated that this housemaster, better known for his scholarship than for housemastering, once passed a boy on the campus who spoke to him so courteously that he turned to his companion and asked who the boy was. "Don't you know?" was the rejoinder. "That's Smith. He lives in your house." Probably apocryphal, this story is nevertheless indicative of a certain casual attitude toward housemastering which no one felt inappropriate in the Andover of 1929.

Though I sat in my study and proctored the four floors every evening, I did not know all the boys in the house well. Since 1929 was before the era of television and since smoking in the housemaster's study was by no means general, my boys had no reason to come to my rooms except to get excuses or, possibly, to talk. The older housemasters did not fraternize with their boys; the younger housemasters were just beginning to allow boys to smoke with them. Though I did not invite my boys to smoke, I did invite them in to talk, and some came. Those who came I remember with pleasure. Guy Hayes was one, Rodney Brown (Bill Brown's athletic brother) was another. These boys lived directly across the corridor and dropped in almost every evening. They were pleasant boys. And there were others who dropped in now and then: Joe Lambie, who later came back to teach; his roommate, Fred Lawrence; Bill Keesling, Dick Wengren, and Charley Williamson, who always found the world amusing. I have always been grateful to these boys for their friendliness to me during my first year at Andover.

I dwell on the detail of my arrival and early experiences at Andover because I think they reveal something of the spirit of the Andover of 1929. My reception was casual; nobody took much notice of me. I was left to find my way around as best I could. There was little, if any, guidance or help from the administration. Fortunately, I had taught for six years before coming to Andover and had a fair command of my subject and some competence in schoolmastering. But I did not know how Andover wanted Paul Revere administered and nobody told me. More surprisingly, nobody told me what texts to use in the classroom. In my early years here there was never a department meeting, never any planning of work together. Everybody was friendly, to be sure, but everybody went his own way. There was a tacit assumption that men who came to Andover to teach knew what they were about and had best be let alone. Everybody had the maximum of freedom and independence and opportunity to experiment. I cannot recall that anyone ever asked me what or how I was doing or that anyone ever visited my classroom or criticized my work. Obviously so independent a way of life had grave weaknesses, but it had virtues too. The wonder is that it did not lead young teachers to extravagant and foolish experimentation. But there was always the sane influence of a group of great teachers. Without them the freedom of Andover might have been a heady tonic indeed. As it was the life was exhilarating. I liked it.

WHEN I was a senior at Andover, John Galsworthy was the greatest living writer. No one could have convinced me otherwise. That was the winter of 1929-30, the year that we revived the Mirror, and I was one of the editors.

I had started reading The Forsyte Saga in midsummer before my senior term, and by Christmas I had not only read every volume of the trilogy, I had read every other book and play that Galsworthy had published. And I was eagerly following the new volumes as they came out in installments in the Delineator Magazine. There was never a need for me to consult the chart of dramatis personae in the back of the book---I knew all their names, which cousin was carrying on with whom, their personalities and language. I could recite portions of The Man of Property, In Chancery, To Let. I used sometimes to imagine that I too was a Forsyte.

Certainly there was no doubt that I could "talk Forsyte". If little 1920 anglicisms crept into the themes I wrote for Dr. Fuess' senior English, that was the reason. And I even wrote a Forsyte Interlude.

"Soames Buys a Picture", it was called. I wrote it originally as a composition for my English class. It took me very little time, perhaps an hour or two. And I wasn't surprised when it came back a few days later marked A, and with a few gracious words in Dr. Fuess' neat, round hand.

I totally agreed with his judgment. To me, the little story was quite indistinguishable from the work of the master. If anything, it was better.

I immediately saw to it, of course, that my Forsyte Interlude was published in the first issue of the new Mirror. If people failed later to stop me in the street to congratulate me on my success, it was, I realized, only because they---poor intelligences---were not so conversant with the upper atmosphere of contemporary literature. At least, I knew what they were missing.

The story was simplicity itself. Soames goes to an auction gallery---but first nearly the entire Forsyte family is introduced to the reader---and outbids a "despicable" Spaniard for a picture. It isn't just any painting. It is a Fragonard. (I was interested some years later to discover that the picture I had described is actually a favorite at the Wallace Collection in London.) Soames nearly loses his mind and his temper because the Spaniard drives the price up to six hundred pounds. During the bidding, he calls the man impudent, crazy, greasy---and even exclaims, "Damn!" His head spins, he perspires and gasps for breath. In these days of Biddles, Lurcys, and Greek ship owners, it occurs to me that the Interlude should have been re-titled: "While the Art Dealers of England Slept."

My next step was to hunt up Mr. Galsworthy's address in Who's Who. Since he not only wrote great literature, but inspired it as well, I felt that he should have the opportunity to join the small privileged circle of my readers. I clipped the story out of the Mirror and mailed it to him, with a modest note identifying the author.

Months passed before anything happened. If my hero's failure to acknowledge his protege disturbed me, I have forgotten it now. The glitter of my little literary gem had started to fade, even in my own memory. Then, suddenly, a letter in longhand from Spain. Here is what it said:

My dear Sir

"No. That sort of thing isn't worth your or any young writer's while. Unless you express yourself, and not other writers, you will never be one. Caricaturing is a snare."

Good wishes
truly yours

John Galsworthy

My reaction was total joy. What the great man had said mystified me a trifle, but after all, he had recognized me as a "young writer." That he should not have cared much for what I wrote seemed trivial. As I saw it, here was the beginning (and, as it proved, the end) of a good vigorous correspondence between two men of letters---one of them, to be sure, slightly along in years.

As I read and re-read the Galsworthy letter, I became increasingly puzzled by one phrase: "Caricaturing," he had said, "is a snare." That I could not comprehend. Had I not written an Interlude, indistinguishable both in style and in thought from the interludes Galsworthy had published himself? Perhaps in England the word had a slightly different meaning.

It was years before I picked up that first issue of the Mirror once again. I quickly turned to page twenty-five, "Soames Buys a Picture." There it still was. The same rich prose, the characteristic Galsworthy exclamation points, and---I found it hard to believe---the impudent, crazy, greasy Spaniard. Mr. Galsworthy had spoken of "caricaturing" in his letter to me. I could understand at last why he had used the word. For in England, it meant exactly what it means in the United States.

A STRONG SCHOOL is a hard bending force in a boy's life, and in later years the man cannot ever be neutral, or just pleasant, or even very sure about what happened to him there. For much of the past thirty years I have thanked God for my own experience at Andover, meanwhile struggling doggedly, and sometimes cursing, to overcome it. Is it useful now in any way, I wonder, to go back and sort out a few old pieces, plus from minus? Likely not, but the effort may amuse the young, and should harm no one else.

I spent three years at Andover, and above all else I learned from Horace Poynter to be thorough, to get the lesson right and get it cold, and to take a daily drubbing in class as a matter of course. All primitive societies depend on a ceremony of ordeal as a way of shaping up the young bucks fast, and as preparation for the ruder parts of our own civilization for the past thirty years Horace Poynter's classroom had a certain merit. Twenty-five of us did Cicero with him daily at 8 o'clock. It was a rough way to start the day, but it had the immediate advantage of making the rest of every day seem easy. And it had the happily unforeseen long-run advantage of making a depression and war seem easy, too. The subject matter was Latin, but that was sub-ordinate to the main thing, which was simply ordeal. The daily routine was uniform and merciless. Horace Poynter sat to one side, sharp pencil poised over his fine-squared grade book, and he called on us one after the other, in strict alphabetical order. When your name sounded you stood up, struggled with your lot of translation, and braced yourself for iron questions. Dispassionately, heavily, now and then sighing or shaking his head in tired disbelief, Horace Poynter scowled at you over his glasses, probed out and exhibited your ignorance and negligence, sat you down, and then, with a small flourish, recorded a grade. If you missed something clean, the grade would be zero, as you could plainly see by watching the pencil top; and the question passed to the next man. If he missed, then the question started a murderous alphabetical round, giving all hands their fair chance at failure for the day. It has taken me thirty years of brooding about the terms of battle in that classroom to see the justice in it that a question which stumped and failed one of us should move relentlessly down through the rest. How grateful we all were to the man who could stop one of Horace Poynter's steamrolling questions! There was no nonsense in this classroom about culture or the fun of learning; what mattered was getting the stuff right and getting it cold and standing up to take your dose when your name was called.

Once I was pretty sore about Horace Poynter's class, and a few others at Andover that were like it, because it occurred that I did not learn until six or seven years later to care beans about the substance of any course of study, or to know there was any possible fun or use in it. For some time it did seem a high price to pay for the classic exercise in toughness and thoroughness. More recently, as a sign perhaps that the years have taken their toll, or just that I have done some teaching myself, I have moved slowly toward granting my old 8 o'clock enemy a few points. I know now that what Horace Poynter did was hard work, and that he represented a long and honorable tradition of school mastering. There was and still is a place in educational theory for the rite of ordeal, and though I think Horace Poynter pushed it much too far, the fact is all of us survived and were usefully hardened by the battle.

Horace Poynter at 8 o'clock was not all of it. Al Stearns came into our lives at 7:45, and he mattered, too. From Al Stearns in daily chapel I learned to respect and fear authority, and to accept my elders' simple and emphatic ethical discriminations of black from white, wrong from right, the "vile" from the "manly." This, it developed, was a useful enough guide for running one's life so long as the Word came thundering down every morning at 7:45, but it was of decreasing use later on, when one was out of range and beyond recollection of Al Stearns's piercing eye and prophetic presence. It was an older day, with its roots in old New England, and it obviously did not occur to anyone then that boys would be helped if they themselves could discuss ethical and philosophical problems, or that there was any advantage whatever (clearly there were many disadvantages) in giving numbers of boys a responsible part in running the school. On these matters Andover has caught up with the twentieth century in recent years, and is a much better school for it.

From Jack Fuess, in his big sunny classroom in Pearson Hall, I learned the joy and the basic skills of writing. Jack Fuess cared about writing, knew about it, and worked at it; and he liked students, and wanted them to know, too, and he was crisp and good humored and civilized about it all, and so he got through. I thought then, and I still think, that Jack Fuess was one of the two great school teachers of my time. His manner was to stand straight before us on the low platform, hands cocked on hips, heels together, a knee twitching, now and then the flat of a hand brushing back nervously over the bald head; his smile was broad and confident, his voice quick and firm; here was a friendly, lively, interested man, keen to have you share with him the fun, the work, and the importance of clear, expressive, disciplined writing. For most of college and all of my working life I have thought of myself as dependent for survival mainly on writing, and the solid growing pleasure I take in the use of language I trace back easily to Jack Fuess.

In recent years I have come to love the work of teaching, the meeting and clash of minds in the classroom; and never far from my thoughts as I prepare for class or work in class is the lithe, crackling, passionate presence of Mike Sides. To be in class with Mike Sides was to sit tight, hold fast, and ride out a wild, breathtaking storm of numbers that burst into the room with him and swirled to all corners as he moved quickly about, stabbing at the board, hurling questions, prodding for accuracy, pleading with us to stretch our minds. "Visualize! Visualize!" was the cry in this room. Never a slow moment was there, nor any let up in the electricity, but there was always kindness and patience, too, for the slow man earnestly struggling. And for all the hundreds he taught, for all the blinding storms of numbers, Mike Sides never lost track of an individual, and never once forgot an old boy---Mike Sides, surely one of the great teachers of all time. Incredible that he should now be gone from us!

Anything else to tell? Well just three smaller things.

For three years I worked in the library for Sarah Frost, Theresa Richardson, and Elizabeth Eades,---kindly friends and gifted professionals all,---and from them I learned what there is in a library, and how to get at it. When I start my own school, I will have every school boy work a month or two in the stacks. It will be hard on the librarians, and harder still on the library, as I was,---but the educational result will be prodigious and well worth all the trouble.

There was the damnable twenty-foot wooden pole in the gym, and the damnable drill to go up it hand over hand without using your feet or legs. Until you could make it, you spent your winter months doing chin-ups and belly-grinds "getting fit." Thou hateful, simple thing, hung there in the corner to daunt and taunt the lubber! I conquered thee at last! And never cared to enter gym again.

Finally I recall the bright spring day when Charlie Forbes went round the class and had us, each man in his turn, recite aloud the line from Vergil, "Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit." A half silly drill it seemed then... and yet... and yet... Somehow even then we knew, with a small eery foretaste of regret, that Vergil was right, and Charlie Forbes was right to make us say it so, fixing it in our young minds to stay. Andover has changed in thirty years, and is much the better for it. But what I learn from sorting through the old pieces is, a man cannot judge his old school without judging a live part of himself. I'm glad I had it the way it was.

THE GREAT MAY DAY RIOT of 1930 occupies an important place in the annals of Phillips Academy. It ranks with the agrarian uprisings in Rome, with Shays's Rebellion in Massachusetts, with the storming of the Bastille in France, and with "The Throuble" in Ireland.(1) Unlike other outbreaks, however, the Andover riot was no protest against social, economic, or political injustice; its cause was simply excess animal spirits. And while other free-for-alls were often harbingers of profound social change, the Andover fracas bore testimony only to the mysterious regenerative power of Spring.

Fortunately for the historian, there is a rich vein of documentary material on this colorful affair. Fortunately, too, the chroniclers of the riot wrote their accounts in what can only be described as "deathless prose." As a result, one cannot do better, in any attempt to recapture what transpired on that memorable day, than let the contemporaries speak for themselves.

It will be remembered that the riot took place between approximately 6:30 and 7:30 a.m. on the morning of Thursday May first, 1930. Thus the Lawrence evening papers were the first to be in a position to report the event. Leading the field was the Lawrence Telegram, with a story that soon got on the Associated Press wires. The Telegram's account read as follows:

YOUTHS 'SPUD' GUESTS AFTER MAY FESTIVAL(2)

150 Hurl Ripe Fruit in Hectic Escapade
Headmaster Stearns of Phillips Academy Insists
Students Make Public Apology for Andover Event

A well directed barrage of assorted fruits and vegetables successfully laid down by a group of nearly 150 youths, all reported as being students at Phillips Andover Academy, furnished the finale for the Andover May Breakfast held this morning in the Town Hall.

A large body of the students had attended the breakfast and shortly before the close of the meal they arose from the tables and going outside gathered about the entrance to the hall.(3)

As the worthy townspeople began to make their exits, a surprising number of oranges, apparently garnered from the tables during the breakfast and stowed in pockets, met the first corners in a hall, and astonished, they again sought shelter inside.

Attracted by the gleeful shouts of the students and the cries of protest from the outraged citizens, Officer Frank McBride of the town police department, left his duties in Andover Square and proceeded to take in hand the new contingency.

Unable to cope with the situation because of the lack of ammunition, the students gave ground.

Then one student, more observant than the rest,(4) spied two sacks of potatoes which had been left in the doorway of a chain store further up Main street. He at once apprised the gathering of his discovery.

The students availed themselves of the new supply immediately, and at the approach of Officer McBride, also "took the situation in hand" and bombarded the officer with the new spring tubers.

Among the group, it is reported, were several athletes of note, and telling shots caused Officer McBride to hastily get out of range of the fusillade.

By this time Headmaster Alfred E. Stearns had been informed of the "doings" and he appeared on the scene.

A glimpse of the headmaster was sufficient to put to rout the schoolboys and abandoning a small supply of potatoes they scattered in all directions.(5)

Going back to the academy, after an investigation, Headmaster Stearns announced that all athletic contests would be suspended at the school until the students who took part in the fray should regret their act and make a public apology.(6)

Unfortunately for the record, the Lawrence Evening Tribune was scooped on the story. In an account that was apparently written the evening before, the Tribune simply reported that the May Breakfast had taken place, attended by "more than 1000 people .... including 121 girls from Abbot academy and 150 boys from Phillips Academy. . . The money from the breakfast," the paper added, "is used for patriotic work and the committee wishes to thank all those who have assisted. During the breakfast music was furnished by Esther West's orchestra. The coffee was provided by Harry Foster of North Andover." There followed a list of table chairmen, waitresses, and other dignitaries. "Several Boy Scouts", it was reported, assisted in the taking of tickets.

When the Andover Townsman appeared on Friday, it soon became clear that the editor was not going to be stampeded into any attempt at sensational journalism. The story appeared, under a modest head, on page 5, while the lead story on page one dealt with the obviously more important matter of a meeting of the local historical society.(7) The Townsman's account is a gem; from this writer's point of view, it is by far the most accurate and the most objective of the various reports.

THE ANNUAL MAY BREAKFAST

The presence of about fifty academy boys who so far forgot their manners as to start a barrage of rolls and doughnuts in the Town hall, lent the only variety to the usual routine of the annual May breakfast, served on Thursday morning under the auspices of the General William F. Bartlett Woman's Relief Corps, 127.(8)

When remonstrated with by the women in charge of the breakfast, the boys, who numbered about fifty, filled their pockets with rolls, doughnuts, and half oranges and left the hall to continue their exercise in the open air where their missiles fell alike upon the just and the unjust. Arrived at the corner of Main and Chestnut streets, they amused themselves by pulling the trolley pole off the wire, jumping on the pads belonging to the automatic traffic control signals, and otherwise interfering with traffic.(9) With the appearance of Officer Frank McBride, the supply of missiles was renewed at the A. & P. where potatoes were appropriated. The unexpected arrival of Dr. Stearns was the signal for flight, but he was successful in rallying their forces and the line of march up Main street was begun without delay by a group of sadder and wiser young men. Groups who were waiting for the arrival of the Abbot girls were also summoned to join the ranks and soon all the boys had returned to the campus.

An unusually large group of Abbot girls arrived at the Town hall at 7:30, just missing the excitement.

The menu included bananas and oranges, cold ham, baked beans, pickles, rolls, doughnuts, pies and coffee. The Shawsheen orchestra furnished music during the repast .......

That same Friday evening, flushed with the success of its story of the previous day, the Lawrence Telegram again led with the riot on page one, as follows:

APOLOGIZE FOR MAY DAY 'RIOT''

STUDENTS 'MAKE UP' FOR ANDOVER AFFAIR

McBride Reveals Other Adventures---Headmaster Leads
Delegation to Headquarters For Apology

Accompanied by Headmaster Alfred E. Stearns, a delegation of the May Day "rioters" from Phillips Andover Academy, who stormed several Andover citizens and Officer Frank McBride yesterday morning with a hail of oranges, doughnuts, sweetmeats and potatoes, called at the Andover police station this morning and apologized to Officer Frank McBride for the "potato episode." The next step, it was learned, will be to make restitution for the peck of potatoes or so which were used in the bombardment following yesterday morning's May breakfast.

When the students came to apologize, Officer McBride told them good naturedly that he took the matter for a "huge joke."

Dr. Stearns has revoked his former order that all athletic contests at the school would be suspended. He stated this morning that he was closeted with several of the boys yesterday afternoon and had come to an understanding. As soon as the boys apologized and paid for the "peck of potatoes" that they used, the affairs of the school would be back to normalcy, he said.

Officer McBride related the story of the affair this morning. He said that the May Day "rioting" has been sort of an annual custom at the academy although the boys never were so "playful" as they were this year.

"They did not mean to hurt anybody," he said, "and I am satisfied that they were only having a good time."

"When I heard the people shouting up at the Town hall I went up there to see what I could do. Somebody told me that the boys had arisen in a body from the tables shortly before the finish of the breakfast and had gathered around the door of the hall and had thrown doughnuts and oranges at the first people who came out.

"When they saw me they started up-street toward the academy and when a short way up turned off the electric signal which shows the right of way to motorists.(10) I knew that they were only fooling so I went into the middle of the street to direct a number of motorists, who had stopped their cars in the middle of the street, undetermined what to do or what direction to take.

"As soon as the students saw me in the street, they formed a line across the road with shoulders together and their arms locked, but I told the drivers of several automobiles to keep right on going through them, and the boys soon cleared the way when they saw that the drivers of the cars were in a hurry and much in earnest about driving through.

"It was then that the boys tossed the 'spuds' at me, but although several hit me, the boys were not tossing them hard enough to hurt me and as long as I had accomplished my purpose of getting them from in front of the Town hall and off the street, I was satisfied.

"When Headmaster Stearns heard of the affair and came on the scene the boys at once stopped their pranks and took to their heels. Really the boys do not owe me an apology and they didn't do any damage."(11)

By this time the Tribune had got the word and featured the story on the front page of its Friday edition.

ANDOVER STUDENTS MAKE AMENDS FOR DISTURBANCE

Athletic Suspension Lifted When Headmaster Stearns Is Informed That
Students Adjusted Matters In their Own Way

Dr. Alfred E. Stearns, headmaster of Phillips Academy at Andover, removed the ban on athletics, Friday, which he imposed as a punishment for the actions perpetrated in the square by a large group of students, Thursday morning after the annual Andover "May Breakfast" in the Town hall.

Dr. Stearns stated that all matters growing out of the disturbance, which consisted of a battle royal with foodstuffs from the breakfast and potatoes from a nearby store, have been satisfactorily adjusted. The student council acted and sent a letter to the Andover board of selectmen, regretting the incident, he stated.

The students were ordered to clean up the mess they created with the food, pay for the potatoes which amounted to $1.25(12) and apologize to Police Officer Frank McBride who entered the line of fire to restore order. The suspension of athletics was raised when Dr. Stearns was assured that the students had adjusted matters in their own way.

Since the Phillipian did not appear until Saturday, its editors were at a disadvantage. They rose to the occasion, however, in the best journalistic tradition and produced a splendid issue, which was labeled "RIOT EXTRA."

SEDITIOUS ANDOVER BOYS TURN MAY DAY BREAKFAST INTO RIOT
USUAL QUIET FESTIVAL BECOMES NOISY TURMOIL
Frisky Students Pelt Police and Invade Abbot Academy
OFFICER McBRIDE IS HERO
Boston and Lawrence Papers Carry Thrilling Accounts of Escapade(13)

According to all accounts in the misinformed press, bullets whistled and tear bombs cried as the Andover boys wrought havoc in the sacred precincts of the usually quiet and dignified town of Andover yesterday. The riot is supposed to have taken place directly following the annual May Day Breakfast. From all reports it must have continued throughout the day except for a hurried trip to Boston during the noon hour for a fresh supply of ammunition. In fact it may still be going on so determined did both sides appear to be to wipe out the sting of early defeats...

The only editorial comment on the riot that this writer has discovered appeared in the Phillipian's column "In Passing":

May first, the annual occasion for national communistic displays, passed comparatively uneventful in London, Paris, Berlin, Moscow, and New York. Andover, Mass., recorded the worst outbreak,---a town picnic. Shopkeepers were robbed, policemen insulted; athletic activity came to a standstill ....

Finally, in a modest box on the front page of the Phillipian, appeared the following apology:

To the Citizens of Andover:

On behalf of the students of Phillips Academy, we wish to extend our sincere apology for the disorderly conduct which took place on the morning of May 1st, at the Annual May Breakfast at the Town Hall. And we sincerely hope that no ill feeling has been created in the minds of the citizens by this thoughtless action.

The Senior Council of Phillips Academy

On Friday evening, May 2nd, the Tribune printed the following notice under its Andover news

All bean pots and pie plates sent in with donations of food for the annual May breakfast .... may be had by the owners at any time. They will be held until called for at the home of Mrs. Franklin S. Valentine, Elm street.

The May breakfast this year was one of the most successful ever held, more than 1000 being served and the committee in charge of which Mrs. Alexander Crockett(14) was chairman is deeply appreciative of all who assisted in any way to make it such a big success.