A FEW YEARS ago when six of us of the class of 1932 were returning to our respective homes in Fairfield County from a dinner in New York where we had been planning our 25th Reunion Fund drive, I asked the question "which did you get more out of, Andover or your college?" Without exception, the answer was "Andover." While in no way intending to denigrate the five different colleges the six of us had attended, the answer was as significant as it was spontaneous for it points up the peculiar and lasting hold which the first educational experience away from home has upon boys and the effectiveness of the job Andover did three decades ago.

We were all of us happy at Andover, we were all of us profoundly stimulated intellectually and all of us felt we had learned the essentials of living with our contemporaries. Standards of behavior, dress and performance were established and-sometimes with difficulty---fairly and honestly enforced. ("No throwing of rolls in the Beanery," "Neckties will be worn at all meals.")

Because we were all growing boys, horseplay had almost as large a part as fair play. To lock an alarm clock in the pulpit of George Washington Hall to go off during the minister's service may be standard schoolboy behavior, as may have been our avid use of snowballs to "assist" the local firemen extinguish a blaze of the chicken coops at the foot of the hill---but it was sheer genius for a nameless hero of the victorious track team to hang a red lantern on the iron gates to Abbot Academy as we celebrated our first victory over Exeter. Being law-abiding by nature, I never made an illegal visit to Shawsheen by night, but I was proud to know those who did. Nor did I try to brew "applejack" out of cider---but I tasted a nauseous amount of vinegar hopefully masquerading as the "real thing."

We were, I am sure, no better or worse than our predecessors or our successors although somehow I doubt if any recent class has had a member who walked around the stone coping on the outside Bishop Hall's third floor just to see if it could be done. Our affectionate recollections of teachers---Freeman, Graham, Boyce, the Newtons, Heely, Benton, Barss, van der Stucken, Fuess---are, I am sure, no less affectionate than those of recent graduates for the current crop of pedagogues with, perhaps, one exception, Al Stearns whom, I think, we all revered as the Grand Old Man.

But the word pedagogue may be far too limited. These men were teachers, yes, in the best classic sense. They taught us, inspired us, chastised us, made us think straight, led us a surprising distance on our separate roads to maturity-and became our friends in addition. Surely, given the kind of kids we were, this last was a service, a gift, far beyond the call of duty!

And yet this friendship, of boy for boy and of teacher for student may well be the core of Andover's success. It leaves a warm deposit in the hearts of its alumni which grows with each passing year. Finis origine pendet was not idly chosen as Andover's motto.

AS ANYONE who goes back a quarter of a century or more knows, it pleased Professor Charles Forbes to think that each of his students in Senior Latin would remember at least one line of Vergil for the rest of his life. He chose, and dinned into us by constant repetition, the words: "Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit," which, in a less concise tongue, may be rendered: "Perhaps at some future time it will give us pleasure to recall even our present plight."

With me his prediction has stood the test of twenty-seven years, even to the fact that, except for the famous opening lines, it is the only verse of the Aeneid I can quote entire. And I do remember his classroom, and several others, with considerable fondness, which was what he had in mind. But the sharper memories are of events not only extracurricular but outside and in ardent adolescent defiance of, the disciplinary code.

There were the furtive night excursions, in the full and joyous knowledge that discovery meant probation or expulsion, to the amusements of Revere Beach or the hazards of Prohibition gin in a speakeasy in Lawrence called the Oval Club. From one such occasion I returned to find my roommate in a state of alarm because a member of the faculty had dropped by after ten o'clock and found my bed empty. It seemed to me, and still does, an admirable expression of fair play when he decided the next day that since he was not my housemaster and his visit had been a purely social one, it was not his obligation to report the unexcused absence.

Two major acts of rebellion, however, stand out in my memory because of the satisfaction they brought, including, of course, the amount of attention they provoked. One was the highly illegal invasion of the most sacrosanct of the secret societies then existing on the Hill; the other was a public blow for freedom from long Sunday morning sermons.

The societies, sometimes called "fraternities" although they had no connections with any national organizations, were eight in number, of which three were rigidly closed to non-members, with secret rituals, mysterious mottoes, and dark pledges to which the initiates reportedly subscribed themselves with blood oaths. The oldest and most exclusive of these was naturally the most challenging target for desecration.

Six or seven of us assembled after hours one night and made our surreptitious way to the rear of the club building. Fortunately for our purposes, the group included the captains-elect of two athletic teams, one of whom was able to boost the other to a precarious grip on a fire-escape at the second story level. The latter managed to pull himself up and climb the fire-escape to the top floor, where he found an open window and descended to let the rest of us in.

In order to keep the sacred premises inviolate, the clubhouse windows were kept tightly sealed against any invasion of fresh air or daylight. This arrangement suited our plans admirably since it enabled us to turn on the downstairs lights without fear of detection, and partake of light refreshment before the main fireplace over which the holy motto was inscribed in Latin. Translation taxed our collective scholarship but we felt amply rewarded by the result: "Great Oaks from Little Acorns Grow."

A prudent fellow among us had thought to bring a camera and we devoted several minutes to a careful time exposure of this fireplace, which was obviously the central shrine of the establishment. During our brief and thoroughly satisfying visit, we listened casually to a distant fire alarm with no foreboding of its consequences for two of our group.

This pair lived in one of the houses occupied by teachers with families, in which one or more rooms were let to students. While the rest of us returned successfully to our dormitories by practised methods, these two boys came home to find their housemaster waiting up for them. Awakened by the alarm and concerned about the location of the fire, he had gone into their rooms because its windows afforded the widest view of the surrounding area.

It is unwise to assume that the same set of ethics will appear equally cogent to two different members of the teaching profession. My co-conspirators invoked, anonymously of course, the precedent in my case, but this man would have none of it and their offense was duly reported to George Washington Hall. Since both happened to be on probation at the time, for various sins of commission or omission, they were promptly expelled.

The rest of us were saddened by this unhappy by-product of our escapade, but our spirits soon rallied sufficiently to consider the uses to which our photographic souvenir might be put. It happened shortly afterward that a rash attempt of mine to enter a friend's locked room by means of the narrow ledge outside the windows resulted in my falling from the top floor of Johnson Hall and breaking my shoulder and hip. I was transferred by ambulance from the Isham Infirmary to a Boston hospital, where I passed some weeks in one uncomfortable position.

Seeking, as my mentors had taught me, to turn adversity to constructive purpose, I engaged the cooperation of an Andover friend then in his freshman year at Harvard. He took our treasured picture to a photo-engraver who rendered it into the cut required for newspaper reproduction.

When I finally returned to school and the dull prospect of making up the work I had missed, it was diverting to consider the best means of achieving conspicuous publication for our photograph. What evolved was that my roommate, up till then an innocent confidant of our iniquities, appeared before breakfast one Wednesday or Saturday morning at the Smith and Coutts Printing Company, in the guise of a "heeler" for the Phillipian. He gave them the cut and a fictitious instruction from the editor that, in compliance with a special request of the trustees, the front page of that day's issue was to be reset to include it, with the caption: "Fireplace in the New Log Cabin under Construction in the Bird Sanctuary."

It was gratifying to see the faces of the outraged club members as the semi-weekly paper was distributed outside the Commons that day.

The reproduction was sharp enough so that the shield with its Greek lettering and the Latin words of the mystic motto below were quite legible.

It was during the following year, our last, that it occurred to a classmate and me to dramatize our disfavor of still another anachronistic institution. We concluded that an alarm clock, strategically placed in the drawer of the preacher's lectern in the chapel and set to go off about twenty minutes after he started to speak, would be a fitting gesture against what we regarded as overlong sermons. We didn't take the trouble to find out who was to be the preacher that particular day; it happened to be one of the few who were reasonably stimulating and comparatively concise, Dr. Erdman Harris of the Union Theological Seminary.

We noticed that the drawer didn't work very easily but we had no idea that it would stick so as to defy all efforts to open it on the part of Dr. Harris and the volunteers who sought to assist him. The result was that he had to wait out the full duration of the alarm.

This episode also had its aftermath. A rumor assigning full credit for the exploit to my confederate circulated widely enough to reach a semi-official undergraduate body known, I believe, as the Senior Council. It was reported that this group was considering a recommendation for disciplinary action against him. He too happened to be on probation at the time, whereas I had managed to survive four years with no such blot on my record. Accordingly, it was an automatic part of the accepted code that I should present myself to the council and confess sole responsibility.

My penance was a letter of apology to Dr. Harris, which I undertook with a slight qualification, defending the general purpose behind the act and confining the apology to the fact that it had inadvertently been directed against the wrong man. He wrote me a charming reply and some years later I heard through friends who were associated with him in social work in New York, that he recalled the incident as a pleasant variation in the uneventful routine of exhortation.

There were other adventures of the sort but I would not like to leave the impression that all my memories are of such a nonacademic character. Let me conclude, therefore, by recording the pride I still retain in the accolade I received from my classmates in the 1932 Pot Pourri---first place in the voting for "Biggest Bluffer in Classroom."

MY YEAR at Andover was the happiest year of my life. This is a hackneyed phrase, but it's true. Looking back on it after over twenty years what I really learnt was to know, to understand, to respect, and to like Americans. Nothing that has happened in twenty years has served to change the feeling of love and affection for things American and particularly for Andover, which I felt as I sailed away in July, 1938 with twenty or thirty undergraduates of my year standing on the quayside and giving Andover cheers.

Of Andover I remember the kindness of the Faculty and the comradeship of my class after what I would politely call a three week trial period; I remember as yesterday Larry Shield's skeleton dressed in mortar-board and scholar's gown with a cigarette between its teeth on some festive occasion; I remember Porky Benton's remark, as the Exeter game drew to its close---"Don't worry, Limey, we'll get you in the game"---and he did; I remember (and I still have my notebook), Dr. Darling's history classes and his hasty withdrawal of the remark "We will now take the Civil War" and the substitution of "We will now take the War between the States," as four students rose from their seats to leave the room; I remember helping to win the Exeter debate when the meeting agreed that America would not be isolationist. Thank God that twenty years have proved this decision to be true.

Of my year in America I remember I learnt a lot of other things too. Some of my learning was strictly extramural: a weekend organised by Dr. Fuess with the Roosevelts at Oyster Bay, Christmas in Savannah with friends I met on the boat going over, a truly American, three week tour of Canada, California, and all points east back to Andover. Perhaps Dr. Fuess's remark, when lecturing to the boys at my English school---Rugby---was not so wide of the mark when he said---"The last time I saw Mike Garnett and Lawrence Viney they were waiting for a blind date."

More seriously, the most impressive things about Andover to an English boy were the freedom of the student body in the selection of the work they would do and their keenness to do it, the downright excellence of the teaching, particularly in my experience, the English classes under Al Blackmer and the history classes under Dr. Darling; (I realise it is invidious to single out some classes as distinct from others but this is, after all, a personal record) and above all the scholarship system and consequently the broad cross section of American boys who were in the School. In England twenty years ago it would not have been possible for a boy at an equivalent school to serve you your lunch, to wash up the dishes afterwards, to ring the bells for classes, and still to be one of the School heroes at the same time.

I have heard of Andover's expansion plans; I hope that within those plans there will continue to be room for some English boys each year. I hope that the boys who go will be fine representatives of their country and will gain as much from their year as I did and I hope they will learn, as I did, to stand up for themselves, for their own country and for their way of life and at the same time to appreciate, admire and respect the basic American virtues of integrity, straight dealing, individual self-respect, and enthusiasm for new things.

I now find myself dealing with American companies and working in partnership with them all over the world. I owe such ability as I have in this connection to my year at Andover. I owe to Andover the fact that I believe with my whole heart in Anglo-American co-operation in all fields. My only ambition now is to see that this co-operation is maintained and improved and my experience teaches me that the only real way to work with Americans is to understand them and to be understood by them, and the only best way to understand them is to meet them and live with them in the years before ideas picked up from other people become settled convictions in an adult mind.

It is difficult to express and impossible to quantify my debt to the School but I am glad to have had this chance to set down on paper my feelings about my Alma Mater.

THE VIVID recollections of Phillips Academy after 21 years, so vivid that they urge me to return at the first opportunity, grow stronger daily. Providing the Alumni Office has one's correct address one can hardly fail to follow the progress of the school, the flow of Class Agent literature and the Bulletin reaching one with impressive regularity. An intermittent correspondence with friends on the Faculty, most of them now promoted to greater authority and Heads of Departments, has kept me up-to-date with events. Pictorial Christmas cards from classmates, prolific progenitors indeed with three or four children apparently normal, show receding hair and increasing girth, a galaxy of attractive wives and the future of P.A. assured.

What does it all mean to me? Simply that the lasting friendships of my year have continued and blossomed across ,3,000 miles of ocean. There are those who met me on arrival advising and guiding me in the early weeks, those of my dormitory, those who laughed with and sometimes at me (with reason) and the many who invited me to their homes. The privilege of acceptance as a member of the Andover community is one I shall ever value; as a result my year provided me with a lasting interest in the U.S.A., its people, politics and customs, an urge to continue the study of its fascinating history (Arthur Darling was as inspiring a teacher as I've known) and a strong desire to further and widen the activities of the English-Speaking Union and its various Exchange Schemes. No other form of contact between our two countries can count for greater understanding. To visit a country is not enough; to live its life for a year or more is the only way.

The memories, the highlights that remain will surely never be lost: a thrilling Exeter football game, won 20-15 in pouring rain---did Maurie Gould take that pass before the ball touched the ground? The serene beauty of the campus in the snow. Working in the Dramatic Club with Mark Lawrence, whose performance made a fair play into a good thriller. The noise and cheering in George Washington Hall during Saturday night movies. Jim Ryley's successful efforts to produce an undefeated Soccer team and his giving me my letter by risking putting me in goal for the last minute of the Exeter game (won 1-0). The concerts by Richard Crooks and Marcel Dupré. Al Blackmer's 'English 5,' so stimulating, informal and informative. Ted Harrison's superb pitching against Exeter and his home run with two bases loaded to win the game (Andover Athletics today could not be in better hands). Commencement celebrations and the Senior Prom. My ever-cheerful housemaster, Lawrence Shields, occasionally forgetting he was a member of the Faculty yet always keeping the respect and admiration of his charges.

But the memory most clear is of the superb hospitality of all Andover friends in the vacations, particularly during a trip to Vancouver and back with Bob Gillespie and Bob Young; Lawrence Barker's Gooch Island and Steve Harris' summer home in Wisconsin stand out in an abundance of friendly welcomes.

If either of my sons, or both of them for that matter, can win an Exchange Scholarship, to Andover they will go if Andover will have them. If they apply they will appear before the selection committee of Headmasters on which I have had the exhilarating experience of serving as a co-opted member for a 3-year term. I trust that Andover's exchange scholars recently have been of the high calibre that they promised to be. At least I can assert that two of them have returned with as much enthusiasm for their year as I did.

A perfect example of Andover's generosity came to my family in 1940. In the dark days after Dunkirk my father wanted to send his 15-year-old youngest son to the U.S.A. as did so many British parents at that time. Naturally he thought of Andover but was worried about the currency restrictions that prevented payment of fees; he cabled the Headmaster explaining his desire and his quandary. Back at once came the reply from Dr. Fuess which said in effect 'Send Dick when you like for as long as you like and pay when you like.' Need I say more?

THE IMAGES fast engraved themselves. There were the blue clock, praetorian of punctuality; the palladian windows, signatures of measured grace; the rows of elms, testaments to grace's age; the ashen stands, coliseums for the passive; the obtrusive tower, portent rather than reminder. There was the vista, at first stretching only west, much later turning up and back upon itself and penetrating the observer. Above all, after twenty years, there was the vista, the long prospect turning out and back again into the life of the mind. That was Andover: an end to innocence.

To see, to hear, to think, to understand---these conquered empty innocence. Slowly it yielded, unevenly, incompletely, its fragments lingering past the last commencements. Innocence did not crumble. It retreated in a series of identical engagements, each a sequence of resistance first, then confusion, then excitement, then perception. Those occasions made the heroes whom recollection honors.

They were at Andover. One stood four yards away from us, a seascape in his hands. It seemed a maze of blues and greens and planes of glass. Marin was not art, we said, nor was Wright, nor Prendegast. Art rang eight bells, or placed a lintel neatly on two posts, or stroked a canvas with the fullness of a brush. Saying nothing, he pointed to this line, that space. We watched, said less, and saw. Another lived in Jacobin aloneness, precise, compassionate, controlled. Proportion ruled his chambers. The music he selected just filled the space in which we sat at tea. Our taste was noisier. We fidgeted until, without escape from listening, we heard.

They were at Andover. Around an oblong table Natasha met Pierre, Aurelian mused, Alcestis dared. Neither memory nor rote replaced elucidation at that table. Disarmed, we stumbled, strove to comprehend, surprised ourselves and thought. In other rooms America expanded beyond the Hill and time reached out in both directions. The record of the past, no longer only names and dates, received its shape from current ruminations. It could change, we learned, and we could change it by questioning our premises. The mind contained the past. We understood. We knew we must inquire. That was the mark of Andover.

Comfort and joy were also there, of course: cold cokes and hamburgers, warm fires and waffles, seniors' cigarettes, proms, movies, letter-sweaters, bonfires, parades-schoolboys' good old days. Now reverie at times constructs of them a snug resort where reminiscence banishes actuality. Perhaps occasionally it should, though not for long. The mind contains the past but may not safely live there.

Life for the mind is process, unsettled questions, uncertain futures. But not unsettling, for the infinitives of sight and sound and thought reach out toward understanding. Fulfillment lies within the vista opened where the blue clock faces west.

That image endures, in us and at Andover. Only the face of the Hill has changed. The parades take different routes; there are new structures, new preceptors, new procedures. But the mark of Andover each year scores new hundreds as it did before, and each year more surely, the sons of Phillips partake of Phillips' mind.

PLATO, in his Allegory of the Cave, demonstrated that reality lay in ideas not things and thereby made it easier for me to understand the school which we all love. For the real Andover is certainly not something material---bricks, stone, lumber, or land. The real Andover lies in the minds of thousands of men. Each sees it differently and each finds his idea changing as the years pass. For me there have been five Andovers.

When I was a little boy living in the town of Andover, I did not think of the school as "Andover," for townies call our school "the Academy" or "Phillips". "The Academy" then meant only a maze of brick buildings, in one of which lived my friend, Bobby Hinman. At the time I did not even know that his father was the famous George Hinman, who taught Latin for so many years. The two of us and Ted Hammond, now mathematics teacher at PA, played "Rin Tin Tin" on the Old Campus and admired the boys who gathered for class in Graves Hall late in the afternoon. Their arrival was always my signal that it was time to go home for supper. Andover was still "the Academy" to me when I attended my first Andover-Exeter football game in 1930--and what a game it was! Not only did King lead Andover to a 20-16 victory, but after one of the extra points a couple of boys tried to run away with the football only to be run down by two overly zealous cheerleaders.

When I entered Andover in 1936, it ceased being "the Academy", and for the first time became "my school." Now the torchlight processions were for me to march in and Graves Hall was a place where I had English. Once that first year Fritz Allis arrived a little late for our English class and some of us beat it out the back door just before he entered the front. Those who stayed received a free cut the next day, while the rest of us had a grim class. It all seemed difficult then and I must have told my father a dozen times that he should not expect me to do as well as I had done in the past. Andover boasts of its small classes, but I do not believe there has ever been a smaller one than the Latin Two that four of us had in a tiny room on the first floor of Pearson Hall. It seemed as though I was always reciting. As an athlete of modest attainments Andover always meant club sports to me and my spirits rose and fell with the fortunes of the Gauls. A second-team Gaul football victory over the Greeks in 1938 was the high point of a fall that included a hurricane. Less joyful but equally real were the 3000 plus miles that I travelled between my home and the school during my four years as a student. While some went on bicycle and some by car, most were on foot, and I used to dream of a private underground train which would carry me from 16 High Street to my chapel seat. This was Andover during my schoolboy years.

Then on to college---in my case Harvard---where Andover became the place which made me better prepared than most of my friends. Even in those days there was "Advanced Placement" and I was given permission to skip English A, History 5, and the French requirement because of work I had done at Andover. Now Andover appeared in some perspective as I looked back instead of forward.

War and graduate study led finally---of all places---to Exeter, where I became a history teacher and assistant football coach. Andover was now a rival. The first day I greeted the end candidates I presented a carefully prepared pep talk, the effect of which was ruined when I ended with the charge that they work hard for the "Exeter" game. Nine weeks later the game took place. When the Andover boys marched in to the "Royal Blue", I was chagrined to find myself standing up just as I had so many times in the past. And now a word to those Andover men who may some day teach at Exeter. No matter how many years you are here people will not tire of asking you the same trite question: "How does it feel to be competing with Andover and for whom do you cheer?" The answer is easy. It feels strange only at first and when you coach boys and know them well, how could you want them to lose?

My fifth Andover is the one I encounter as a teacher and historian. At Exeter I began to meet the Andover historians on a fellow teacher basis-it took me five years to start calling them "Miles", "Fritz", "Len," and "Ken." We were now teaching similar courses with similar standards and in many ways I was closer to the real Andover---a school with high standards where studies come first-than ever before. But it was not until I made a short study of the many-volume Dictionary of American Biography that I saw Andover in the clearest possible perspective. Here are the biographies of the great, near great, and merely important people in the history of our country. One hundred and thirty-seven of these men went to Andover, placing it second among schools---Boston Latin first, Exeter third---and fourteenth among both colleges and schools---Harvard first and Yale second. Through these men and thousands of others Andover has made steady contributions to our country's history. Oliver Wendell Holmes and Samuel F. B. Morse were Andover men and I am certain that they saw Andover in many different changing ways.

Plato was right. Reality lies not in things but in ideas, and Andover has been a series of ideas in my mind ever since I played "Rin Tin Tin" on the Old Campus.

THE New York Times has just printed a number of letters on the pros and cons of schoolboys' learning Latin, and the Vice President of the United States has announced that he is in favor of it. I am in favor of it, too---although, if I had been polled on the subject twenty years ago, I might have voted differently.

For it was then that I was drawing to the close of one of the most challenging episodes of my life: Latin 2 at Andover, as taught by the late Horace Martin Poynter. To previous Andover generations he had been known as "the Colonel", because of his Kentucky origins, but the term had fallen into disuse by the time we were exploring Gaul with him.

I took this course during my prep year and expected at the beginning to breeze through it---the reason being that I had already taken it at another school. True, I had failed both course and College Board; nevertheless, I felt sure that after once traversing the rocky terrain of De Bello Gallico, however unsuccessfully, few hazards would arise in repeating the journey.

This optimism survived the first meeting of the class. The master himself, while rather formal in manner, seemed reasonably amiable. His close-cropped black-and-grey hair, curved nose and horn-rimmed glasses gave him the appearance of a distinguished owl. He spoke in a throaty growl with overtones of sinus trouble. The vest of his well-pressed pepper-and-salt suit restrained a medium-sized paunch, the kind which marks its possessor as one who enjoys good living but does not wholly give in to it. The assignment he gave out was pleasantly short.

When the class assembled the following day, however-about fifteen of us, seated alphabetically in a room large enough for forty---I began to see why certain of the old boys I already knew had shaken their heads dubiously when I told them I had been assigned to Poynter's class.

His first question was to Adams, inquiring why a certain word in the first line of the assignment was in the ablative case. Adams gave a good answer. Not a correct answer, but one which showed imagination. I might have given the same answer myself, expecting to receive an indulgent nod for having made a good try, followed by an explanation of the point, and no harm done. Poynter, however, in the calmest of tones, uttered only two words: "Zero. Ayres?".

Ayres also collected a zero. The question was referred to the next boy in the front row (I have forgotten his name), who delivered a scholarly answer which found reasonable favor with the master and earned a mark of seven. As the questions followed one upon the other, row after row of us, in strict alphabetical sequence, were treated to Poynter's disconcerting stare, his frown or nod as the case might be and the brief squiggle of a pencil as he entered his numerical appraisal of each response in his grade book.

I don't recall how I fared that first day, but when the bell rang at ten o'clock I felt that the previous fifty-three minutes had lasted as long as a light-year. For the first time in my life, I had faced a teacher who couldn't be fooled. Hitherto, I had been the sort of pupil who raised his hand only when he knew the answer---the only exception being when I didn't know the answer but had so recently been called on as to be reasonably sure of not being called on again.

Poynter's system, however, excluded bluff. Only rarely did he call for a volunteer answer. Instead, he raked his rows of schoolboys with questions as relentlessly and dispassionately as an admiral who has crossed the T of the enemy fleet. And, worst of all, he was influenced by only one thing: how much the pupil under fire knew, graded on a scale of ten to zero. Zero! Poynter was the only teacher I ever knew who actually gave zeros, and he gave plenty of them. Nor could he be put off by an earnest expression, a furrowed brow, an attempt at humor, an elaborate explanation of how you had arrived at a wrong answer or any of the other traditional methods which schoolboys use to camouflage a lack of knowledge. Not that he would cut a boy's histrionics short. He always listened gravely to them and, I think, after decades of schoolmastering must have been rather a connoisseur of them, but when the performance was over, however brilliant it had been, matter and not manner influenced what went down in his grade book.

The Poynter system, in fact, had the simple inexorability of a law of nature. A boy might be called on to recite four or five times each day. These marks would be averaged into a daily grade. The class met four times a week, so the four daily grades were averaged again into a weekly grade. A term lasted twelve weeks, producing another average. This term average counted two-thirds in determination of one's final term mark. The other third came from one written examination at term end---the only test or exam, by the way, which he ever gave. The three term marks were averaged into one final mark at the end of the year. If the final figure was 60 or better, you passed. If not, you failed.

Poynter's theory was that, with brilliant cramming a boy might be able to score brilliantly on a two-hour term exam. But he doubted that this proved that the boy knew his Latin. Or it might work the other way: an ordinarily good student might go to pieces in an exam. So Poynter made a boy recite more than 200 times each term and gave double weight to this day-by-day performance. A hard system, a just system, and you couldn't beat the averages. A system not unlike life itself.

For me, as one who had never faced hard-nosed schoolmastering of this kind, the first six weeks of Poynter were almost completely demoralizing. I gave up all but the most superficial studying of my other courses in order to concentrate on Latin. I entered that bare schoolroom on the south-east corner of the first floor of Samuel Phillips Hall nervous and afraid. As the cannonade of questions descended on my row---Early, Hepler, Macdonald, finally to me---the tension became unbearable. As the zeros mounted, I took to arriving early for a look at the grade book. No market analyst ever watched a stock more carefully than I charted the daily relationship (in order of importance) Horace Martin Poynter, Caius Julius Caesar and myself. My mid-term mark was a 50, and I was exhausted.

For the first time in my life, I found myself up against a situation which offered no easy out. Although I had passed all my other courses, in at least a couple of them bluff alone had pulled me through. If present trends continued, I stood a better than even chance of the awful awful---the boot itself.

I firmly believe that at that moment, I took a long step into adulthood. Instead of continuing to run from Poynter, I determined to stand and fight. My first decision was to give my other courses their proper due; all could not be sacrificed to De Bello Gallico.

My second decision was to stop worrying about failing Latin and start thinking of ways to pass it. Like Omnia Gallia my problem was in tres partes divisa: an almost complete lack of talent for learning any language but English; very bad pre-Andover preparation; and Poynter himself. On the first two points, it was too late to do anything. My hope lay in the third. So I cut down on my study of Latin in favor of studying Poynter.

He had his crotchets. For one thing, he believed that boys should know correct Latin pronunciation (Kickero, not Sissero; Kysar, not Seezer) and often asked questions on this. Now Latin pronunciation is easy to figure out---at least, it was easy for me. So each day I read the assignment aloud to myself till I was Roman-perfect. This helped.

In translation, Poynter was not content with the literal. He wished any English rendering to be good English. In Caesar's Commentaries, as my fellow sufferers know, nearly every paragraph starts with a wind-up in the form of an ablative absolute: His litteris dimissis, Labienus ... . etc. The classic schoolboy translation of this is, "These letters having been sent, Labienus. . .", followed by whatever Caesar's ubiquitous legatus may have done to the poor Galli. Poynter would have none of this. He claimed that "having been sent" was awkward English. "I wouldn't take that from my old grandmother, Moorehead," he would say to the boy who two decades later was elected to Congress from Pennsylvania, and poor Bill would collect a goose egg.

So I made sure that my translation was done in spirited English ("After dispatching this news to Rome, Labienus . . ."). On one or two occasions, in fact, I had the satisfaction of uttering such noble-sounding English that Poynter apparently overlooked the fact that some of the more difficult Latin words had literally been lost in the translation. One day Bill Macdonald (dead in the war) had not done his assignment and was struggling with a phrase which had baffled me the previous night. "The counter... may be thrown. . . away . ."he muttered in an agonized attempt at translating iacta alea esto. "That's not worthy of one of history's great moments, Macdonald", Poynter rumbled. From this clue, knowledge flooded in upon me as my name was called. "The die is cast!", I intoned in a basso which I hoped would impress Poynter as worthy of Kysar himself. "That's more like it", said Poynter, and I felt sure I had scored a ten. Then he went on to express his sorrow that I had overlooked the fact that esto was in the subjunctive and the phrase should therefore be translated as, "Let the die be cast". I ended up with a seven.

In Poynter's habit of calling on us in alphabetical order, I was fortunate, for Macdonald was a good student who got rattled easily. Often he knew the answer but muffed it badly enough for Poynter to pass the question on to me. When this occurred, I formed a policy of trying to rephrase what Macdonald had said instead of relying on original thinking. He earned me quite a few tens over the months.

On the other hand, Macdonald's predecessors, Hobe Early and Ralph Hepler, were the two best students in the class. If one or both of them missed and Macdonald scored, Poynter was apt to follow with an easier question. This helped. If all three missed and the question passed to me, I had the benefit of three good opinions (all far better than mine) on the answer and was often able, by process of elimination, to make a successful shot in the dark. (Needless to say, this didn't always happen. On more than one occasion, Poynter passed a single question right around the class, received no answer which satisfied him and gave everyone a zero.)

The seating arrangements also made it possible to predict, within reasonable limits, what part of the assignment one would be asked about. So I concentrated on these and let the sections immediately fore and aft go by the board. For instance, I made it a rule never to do more than glance at the first sentence or two of the assignment; as the eighth to be called on, it was fairly certain---barring an off day or a trip to the infirmary for Early or Hepler---that I would never be asked about it.

Also there was little point in studying any first- or second-declension nouns or first- or second-conjugation verbs. Poynter rarely asked about them---too simple. In general, anything odd-looking was a peril, and he bore down especially on idioms and verbs taking the dative.

Each night I handicapped the next day's assignment with the care of a horse-player down to his last sawbuck. And I never got far enough ahead to breathe easily. Throughout the course, in fact, I scored only one unqualified triumph, and that came completely without planning. One day, for some reason I cannot fathom---never having done it before or since---I came into class chewing gum. My first question was a simple one-the case of some noun, as I recall---and I answered it correctly for a ten. A moment later Poynter turned to me from the front of the class and asked if I was chewing gum. I admitted that I was. "No one does that in my class", he said. "You may go, and one demerit."

Now one demerit was no punishment at all. Demerits were given very infrequently at Andover then; a boy was allowed eight and I had none. So as I left, the big question in my mind was whether or not the ten would be allowed to stand. For several days I avoided looking at the grade book, fearful that any inquiry might remind Poynter of the ten-gum connection. When the week's average had been posted, I joined the crowd which always formed on that day. The ten stood! It was the only ten-for-a-day I ever scored. Was Poynter being fair or only forgetful? He never told me and, of course, I never asked.

Most memoirs of schoolmasters are character studies. This one is not, for Poynter was no Mr. Chips. Outside the classroom he was pleasant but rather distant. He took a personal interest in few boys (chiefly those who lived in Samaritan House, where he resided); I was not one of them and rarely saw him. Inside the classroom he was neither especially fierce or witty or even informative. (Occasionally, Hobe Early could get him going on Roman history but never for very long.) He sometimes talked reverently of the man who had taught him Latin: Old Sawney Webb, Poynter called him, of the Webb School in Bell Buckle, Tennessee. Other than the "not for my old grandmother" remark, earlier quoted, I can only remember two catch-phrases which he used: "Having eyes, he sees not; having ears, he hears not; neither does he understand," and, after particularly bad recitations, "The last resort of a feeble intellect". I remember them so well because they were so often addressed to me.

After twenty years, Poynter the Man lives in my memory much less than Poynter the Force. In my first days in his class, I felt he could see right through me, into the vast pool of ignorance which constituted my grasp of the Latin tongue. Later, after the first mid-term marks, I decided that he wasn't my enemy, but simply a neutral element against which I would have to contend. This combination of indifference and implacability was something quite new to me, as I think it is for most boys of fifteen. It was my first taste of what the world is like.

I passed the course with a 65. Today I cannot tell you much about those interminable marchings and parleys in Gallia, nor translate anything in Caesar's language much more complicated than tempus fugit. But that 65 represented to me then, and still does, a triumph. However much Poynter may have taught me about Latin, he caused me to learn a lot about life.

DOCTOR FUESS'S inviting me to contribute to an Alumni Symposium causes me a certain uneasiness. Am I in danger of losing my amateur standing? I hope not, if for no other reason than that it would further perplex the genial Secretary of the Class with which I am affiliated honoris causâ. For years he has been sending me notices and statements and summonses, each subscribed with a footnote in his own hand saying, in effect, "I don't understand what your name is doing on my list, but it seems to be there, so what the hell." This is something quite close to Belongingness, and I should only risk dissolving an illusion if I were to send Doctor Fuess the essay that I have long meditated: "How I Came to be an Un-alumnus." For I am not an Alumnus. Indeed, I was far gone in senility when I came to Andover to teach. At the very best I can claim only that I am a graduate of Adams Hall; but who, that has ever taught here, is not?

Nevertheless it is true that I can scarcely remember a time when Phillips Academy was not a familiar idea. I was brought up in Haverhill; and although our family inclined rather towards Exeter when it thought of "private schools" at all, the Royal Blue, incarnate in enormous and ferociously glamorous halfbacks, worked a by no means remote magic. I was an outcast and an alien; yet I knew that the trolley ride through Bradford and Ward Hill led straight south to Beth-el. Later, in college, I discovered that the halfbacks were not magic, but true, though only a part of a more complicated truth: a way of life, a way of looking at things, an assurance of bearing, a manner almost ritualistically refined, that seemed to my public-school prejudice the essence of confident worldliness. This impression was so strong that I was only slightly astonished, many years still later, when I learned from a visiting Andover instructor that Shep's halfbacks were wont to plunge through the line singing, in triple counterpoint, the Palestrina motets that they had learned in Dr. Pfatteicher's choir. Such a paradise had to be revisited. At Doctor Fuess's invitation I came, under Doctor Fuess's guidance I saw, and by Doctor Fuess's providence I was assigned to Adams Hall.

My contribution to the Symposium really ends here; for when I have said that I became a part of Andover, I have said one of the most important things that have ever happened to me, and I have also solved the membership puzzle that has been troubling my Class Secretary so unnecessarily. It is my personal good luck to have been here while some of the giants of the immediate past were still so vividly on the scene; and it is something more than good luck to move into my last Andover decade accompanied by so many colleagues no less gigantic for their unawareness of being giants at all. The motets I have found, of course; but something stronger and purer than all the Palestrina and Arcadelt and Byrd and Tallis has been the discovery and daily appreciation of the motor, the motive, the δύναμις of the place. Like everyone who has ever come here, boy or man, I have taken more than I have given, learned more than I could possibly teach. That is the particular grace of Andover and of schools like Andover; and as an Un-alumnus of nearly twenty years' standing, I am grateful for it.

TWO YEARS AGO, when I was working for a Boston newspaper, I was unexpectedly told that on Sundays I was supposed to be the newspaper's art critic. I couldn't very well decline, since the person who was telling me was the managing editor, but I heard it with a good deal of alarm. What passed through my mind, as it has periodically and unsettlingly passed through my mind ever since 1945, was Mr. Patrick Morgan's studio course in drawing and painting. What I said to the managing editor was that I wasn't sure I knew very much about art.

The managing editor, a shy but forceful man of few words, replied shortly, "You've got eyes, haven't you?" I had eyes when I took Mr. Morgan's course, but they weren't much help. The educational principle I was relying on, and that I relied on during most of the three years I was at Andover, was perseverance. What I couldn't imitate, I memorized; I worked harder than I ever have afterwards, and I liked the things I worked on to be logical and conclusive. I didn't care for loose ends; when I learned something, I wanted it to be something definite. And I was all right as long as Mr. Morgan was explaining shades and hues, and specific theories of perspective and composition. It was when we reached the point of producing a drawing of our own that I was out of my depth.

Mr. Morgan arranged a still life that consisted of a solitary seashell against plain drapery and that I now know had a striking simplicity. At the time I didn't see much in it, which made me slightly more nervous than I was already; it just looked like a seashell. We were given easels, large pieces of drawing paper, and stationed in an intent semi-circle. "Try to get the feel of it," Mr. Morgan said. In the creative hush that followed, I realized that there were not going to be any more instructions; I also realized that my mind had gone blank. Here and there fellow students began to attack their drawing boards. There was still no identifiable trace of thought in the hollow, ringing spaces of my mind. I set to work, a little desperately, on a detailed, exact, life-size reproduction of the seashell.

It turned out to be a rather complicated seashell. It not only had a number of intricate recesses, it had tiny bumps on its surface, and when I left my easel to inspect it more closely---other people were inspecting it, so that seemed a proper thing to do---I observed that among the bumps were even more tiny ripples. I began to get interested. The seashell had something to it, after all. I rubbed out the bumps and drew, if making minute marks with a lead pencil held in a clenched fist can be called drawing, a combination of bumps and ripples. After an interval of concentrated effort, feeling pleasantly exhausted, I stepped back to enjoy my work from a distance of more than twelve inches.

At about this moment I found that Mr. Morgan was enjoying it, too. He was standing behind me, in his olive drab corduroy jacket, his light brown hair slightly ruffled and his head cocked to one side. It was a moment that must have been a considerable test for a teacher of art. His expression, however, was wholly serious; and all he said, his head still tilted thoughtfully, was to ask, in the tentative voice of one artist to another, whether I didn't think the drawing was a bit small.

I looked at it. He was right. It was small; it was, in fact, appallingly small---on a piece of paper more than two feet wide, it occupied a space of about three inches by four inches. I rubbed it out, leaving a small black smudge. Mr. Morgan approached the easel, tilted his head to the other side, and sketched a long, elegant charcoal line, suggesting one side of the seashell and extending up most of one edge of the paper; with no change in his voice he wondered if I'd like to try something that size.

The line had the force of a revelation. I fastened tightly and gratefully on the new, large-scale theory. During the next two weeks, with the same earnest care as before, I applied myself to turning out three more long lines, to suggest the other three sides of the seashell, and a circle, to suggest its mouth. At the end of the two weeks, in a moment of inspiration, I connected the ends of the lines into a single continuous line. I waited anxiously for Mr. Morgan's final comment.

It came at the beginning of the next class period. "Yes," he said. "Much better now, isn't it?" His expression was as serious as it had been the first time, but he must have been feeling a certain amount of relief. It wasn't anything compared to the relief I felt. As he moved on, I turned back to the drawing. He was right; it didn't look too bad. As a matter of fact, it looked pretty good. I didn't know how it had been done, but somehow, between us, one artist with another, we had done it.

WHEN I AM older, when I have time and the authority of age, I would like to be invited back to Andover to speak before the assembled students in George Washington Hall. I would wear a beard and a dark suit and hold my eye glasses in one hand and my walking stick in the other. I would keep my audience long after my time was up, lying sentimentally, tricking them with dramatic artifice, serving truth up in humor, secure in the knowledge that they would be bound from respectful courtesy (and the rules of the place) to hear me out.

I would speak of what I learned at the school and I would admonish my audience to learn the same things better. I would talk in three American dialects and four foreign languages. I would use a blackboard and lantern slides to illustrate and emphasize my message, and I would request that it be filmed for re-use, perhaps as part of the annual Christmas program. I would make it a point to be funny, positive, racy, opinionated and virtuous. I would be a droll and challenging poseur from the past and I would enjoy myself enormously at the boys' expense.

It is a delicious image, one perhaps conceived when I was a member of another such audience in another time. But I am not yet old and I do not wear glasses or carry a walking stick or sport a beard. I not only lack the authority of age, I have yet to emerge from the uncertainty of youth. I exist with all of my contemporaries in the common limbo of responsible manhood. The pulse of my world is not in the church or the club or the library. It is in my son's crib and the pages of my daily newspaper.

What I learned at Andover of course doesn't yet interest anyone but me. It is the usual lackluster catalogue of facts and tricks which once gained my admission to a college. But what I did not learn is quite another matter. Here is a field ripe for exploration, jammed with the artifacts of a disgruntled adolescence, set to the music of Carl Pfatteicher's boisterous Bach, enriched by the patient understanding of Patrick Morgan, and circumscribed with tight-lipped exactitude by the ever-watchful Dean Benedict.

The reasons for my failure to learn certain things at Phillips Academy were two:

1. I was incapable.

2. They were not offered in the curriculum.

For my incapability I can offer no excuse except to say that it was probably congenital. I did not come from a family of scholars. Although most of my forebears cultivated a certain sub-literate respectability, few had any real head for it. But that is another matter and hardly worth investigating here. If the school were at fault in connection with my incapability, it was only in allowing me to matriculate. And there were times, whole terms in fact, when we both had misgivings about that.

But reason number two is what I wish to open for discussion. What did Andover fail to offer me? Where was the curriculum so deficient that I emerged inadequately prepared for what lay ahead? I think I have a clear idea about this and I would like to submit it for whatever it is worth. In an age when so much attention is being directed toward the schooling of the young, I fear Andover has not come in for its fair share of criticism. Let me be the first then, to point the finger. If my statement reads like a bill of particulars, that is because it is a bill of particulars. It is my critique of the school as I knew it. It is a revisionist manifesto, rationally conceived and affectionately addressed. If used by those in charge of bringing the curriculum up to date, it would help the school to take its place in the vanguard of world education and assure us of a substantial lead over the Russians, the Dutch, the Burmese and the Ethiopians in the struggle for survival.

When I attended Andover there were no courses in the following:

There are other deficiencies I could point out but the few I have included should do for a start. There is one other however, I should mention. We had no laboratory periods in Compassion, at least none which were long enough. This was largely left to chance and I have found it necessary to work hard on it nights and weekends in recent years to keep up. In spite of my bootstrap efforts, the abundance of evil and suffering in the world drains me daily.

But my list is ended. If it serves only as a basis for fruitful discussion when next the curriculum comes up for revision, I shall have accomplished my purpose.

I am forced to acknowledge that apologists for the school as it was in 1943 when I arrived will probably point out that most of the subjects I have mentioned existed one way or another in an unofficial, sub-rosa fashion. Perhaps. With the insight born of personal experience I know that one does not have to look too closely at any group of young men to find among them most of the assorted vices and stupidities of our species, newborn and fresh, ready to be of service for life or quickly abandoned upon coming of age. It was true of us.

But it certainly never represented the kind of case-hardened social and intellectual conditioning my recommendations would demand. Had we been brutalized a little in some formal way we would have been so much better equipped. As it was, most of us were turned out of school with nothing more than a sound academic foundation, a suspicion that there might be some truth in the old verities after all, and a civilized ethic. Now where on earth could that imperfect list of qualifications carry us?

Certainly it has left me---and I must suppose, my contemporaries---badly prepared to jump feet first into the middle of the twentieth century. Nothing is quite what we expected. We don't fit as neatly as we might wish. In truth we hardly fit at all ....

But the apologists are interrupting again. The insistent voice of the Dean in Charge of Curriculum Revision is asking to be heard. He is telling me I missed the point.

Is that possible?

Is it that we were not supposed to fit? Not expected to adjust? Are most of the things I left unlearned better left that way? What is it then? Are we to plunge in anyway and use what we did acquire in the best possible way?

We could, you know.

HAD A MARXIST historian applied himself to the academic year which ended when the Class of 1951 left Andover, he would surely have concluded that things were, indeed, ripe for Revolution. The Hill's society, that year, compressed itself into two huge classes, with a more-or-less rigidly drawn line between them. Each class had its leaders (our historian would have called them "vanguards"), its slogans, its rallying places, and its secret agents. Month after month, Revolution was delayed. When finally it came, the classical pattern was followed---the oppressed class emerged victorious. By Commencement day, the Flits had neatly humbled the Jocks.

It is easier to describe the two camps than to say how they came to exist. One point must be made clear at the outset, however; for most of the year, neither class knew of its own existence, while each was acutely aware of the other. The Jocks (the name was given them by the Flits; it alluded to a distinguishing article of clothing; a Jock never, of course, referred to himself as a Jock---had he done so he would immediately have been suspected as a Flit secret agent) were to be found, during the day, heaving and puffing among the more recent Alumni bequests to the school. Evenings, they gathered near their Headquarters, Bishop Hall, or their Command Post, the steps of the Commons. In the mind of the Flit, the Jock was characterized by three of the five traits the philosopher Hobbes ascribed to life in the State of Nature: poore, nasty, bruitish. Hobbes' other two traits hardly fit the Flit's description of the Jock---Jocks, in Flit mythology, were seldom short and never solitary.

This, of course, was nonsense. Jockism was a state of mind. Some of the frailest, puniest members of the Class of 1951 were Jocks, if only as mascots. Just as absurd was the Jock's eye view of the Flit (the name, by the way, came from what the Jocks felt the Flits did, though just where they did it remains unclear; the height of Jock humor often came when one of them made a flapping motion with his arms as a Flit shuffled by; even more than the Jocks, a Flit would never call, nor consider himself, a Flit). Flits were just as often big and hearty-looking as they were the slight, weak, be-spectacled specimens so scorned in Jocklore. Flit GHQ were in Paul Revere North, where some of their number even went so far as to listen to serious music during the daytime in artificial darkness created by drawn curtains. Because of the invidious system of the Honor Roll, however, the Flit vanguard was scattered throughout the choicer rooms available to Seniors on the two hill-top quads. Flit activities were also more diversified; there was only one thing, in fact, which a Flit did not do, and that was to try on the playing field. Those who did try were eyed with great suspicion by their peers, who were never again entirely at ease in their society.

Jocks, however, were tolerant of certain aberrations in their midst. They were especially fond of being spotted in the basement of the Addison Gallery, smock-clad, palette-knife in hand, squinting at deformed images on the easels before them. Jocks were seldom musical; the only thing they never did, however, was seek academic distinction.

The Revolution of 1951 was first marked by increased circulation of secret agents. The Jocks proved to be much more open to infiltration than the Flits; whenever Flits discovered in their midst an incipient Jock, he was immediately branded with the label of "Philistine" and drummed into a nether world where class distinctions no longer applied. In most years, this had been the case with the Jocks as well; once discovered, a budding Flit was given short shrift. By this manner, in most Andover Classes, the two camps refined themselves into ideologically pure hard-core Jocks, and soft-core Flits, with the vast majority of the population in the middle and not giving a damn. But in 1951, Flits were thicker on the ground than usual, and Jocks were especially open to subversive appeals. Perhaps it was because they were allowed to fill the Mirror with their drawings-one of the most jockish Jocks did the cover two issues running. Always before the Mirror had been a preserve of, by, and for the Flits. Or it might have been the spell of the stage in George Washington Hall: when the prettiest Faculty wife took on Shakespeare's Cleopatra, dramatics suddenly became a quite respectable activity.

It was the stage, indeed, which undid the Jocks, for it provided them with the scene of their own destruction. The means were provided by a small group of Flits who worked throughout the spring months on an operetta called "The Little Green Bag". Staged before a packed house the night before Commencement, "the Bag" charted the Rake's Progress of a Flit who came to Andover ("I've come to the Hill/ To get my fill/ Of the Great Real End of Living. - .") clutching a little green book-bag, the sure emblem of Flitdom. Gradually, after passing through an immense Jock-manned Conformity Machine, the hero himself became a Jock as his little green bag was cremated on a blazing pyre ("Oh little green bag, you've brought me woe; you've set me apart like a man with B.O."). The all-Jock cast, in chorus, crooned the play's concluding hymn: "We pray that in this Mortal Strife, we'll win our Major A in Life." With "the Bag", Flitism became fashionable. The implications of this fact were far reaching. Some of the biggest Jocks, when they reached their colleges the next September, could not be lured onto the playing fields, and became almost obsessive in their devotion to activities formerly scorned as Flitish.

One wonders where it has all led. Are there still Jocks and Flits? The Director of Athletics (a converted Flit, one suspects---he has the zeal of a convert), in a recent article in the Alumni magazine, bragged of his ruthless war on the two institutions that are at the very foundation of Flitism---Social Track and the Medical Excuse. On the other flank, the reach of the Addison Gallery is reportedly more all-encompassing than ever before; perhaps every Jock is now viewed as an undiscovered Jackson Pollock, and he and his fellows allowed to cover hockey-rink and gym with murals. If so, they should dedicate a panel to the Revolution of 1951, and inscribe on it the Revolution's epitaph: if you can't lick them, join them.

I AM UNDOUBTEDLY not the most unathletic student ever to attend Andover, but I certainly rank well down in the bottom fifth of all Andover alumni in athletic ability. My accomplishments in sports in my two years at P.A. are, with one glorious exception, best expressed in the phrase "satisfactory improvement," which means that I can now run all the way around the track without stopping. The exception is, of course, the winning of my varsity letter.

My rise to fame began in my Upper Middle Year. As an unsuspecting prep, I had gotten trapped in the cross-country running program in the fall term, and I was determined to avoid anything of the kind during the winter. A friend talked me into going out for squash, an innocuous-sounding sport, but I was told after one day that I had "no natural racket ability," and was cut on the spot. As I walked back to my locker, swinging my brand new ten-dollar squash racket, I decided that there was nothing to do but accept my fate and sign up for basketball, the only sport I could think of for which there would be no charge for equipment.

I was savoring the embarrassment I would feel when it was discovered that I could shoot a basket only with the greatest difficulty, a disability enhanced by my height of five feet four inches, as I walked into the secretary's office to change my sport. But a notice in the daily bulletin on the wall outside the door transformed my bleak future to a rosy one. It appeared that there was a shortage of swimming managers, and underclassmen were being urged to volunteer. In the hope of discovering a sinecure in which I might relax for a season, I signed up for the job, although I knew nothing about swimming except that I had seen someone do something called the butterfly stroke once and wanted to see it done again.

The job turned out to be almost all I had envisioned. It required only forty-five minutes a day of my time, which I could spend in civilian clothes doing paperwork that involved the use of only the most elementary level of reasoning, or pressing a stop-watch. I was happy.

But bigger things were in store for me. Though I was unaware of it at the time, the varsity manager of each swimming season, who receives a letter for his work, is chosen from the previous season's assistant managers, of which I was now one. Upper Middlers are considered first because they will be seniors during the next swimming season and, all other things being equal, seniors are more deserving of important posts than lower classmen. I was one of two Upper managers, and when, at the end of the season, the other Upper refused the job, I was chosen varsity manager. I asked what would be required of me if I accepted, and, when I was assured that I would be able to delegate almost all my work to the assistant managers, I agreed to take the job.

I served as varsity manager during the '58-'59 season, which was one of Andover's most successful swimming seasons in years. We had a record of six wins and three losses, and, although we lost to Deerfield, we won our big meet with Exeter. I feel entitled to some credit for our success because, from my point of view, the team's greatest incentive to sweeping the season was the prospect of throwing me in the pool when it was over.

But it cannot truthfully be said that I earned my letter by sparking the successes of the swimmers. I am convinced rather that it was the effort I put into the simple mechanical tasks of running the team that won me my "A." Not the least of these tasks was learning the names of the varsity swimmers. To help myself, I made a list with the aid of the address book in which I paired names with thumbnail descriptions. I then embarked on a campaign to identify everyone. Discreet and casual questioning of those I knew got them to reveal the names of some of the most difficult cases, like the mystery man who swam slow butterfly strokes up and down the pool for hours at a time. The moment of triumph came when I could say with confidence that I knew everyone on the team, but the victory was unfortunately hollow, coming as it did well after the season was over.

The assistant managers were, of course, a constant source of vexation. Each had his own foibles. One, for instance, used to forget to take the check-in list up to the secretary after practice, and once he took it home with him in his French notebook. His lapses became a serious problem which I finally solved only by reasoning with him repeatedly---in a loud voice.

Other problems took more ingenuity. We had a large board with nails driven in it on which we hung a tag for each swimmer in each event, showing his time and, by his place on the board, his position in the event. The chances for tags to fall off or be misplaced were multiplied by the naturally boisterous nature of swimmers and assistant managers, but the greatest trouble was caused by the juniors in their morning athletic program. As anyone knows, juniors are even more rambunctious than athletes, and one afternoon I arrived at the pool to find that the juniors had been there that morning and tipped the tagboard over. Half the tags had to be fished out of the water. Knowing that an appeal to reason would be futile, I hit upon a psychological appeal to the basic instincts so close to the surface in those I was dealing with. I got a big rope and tied the board tightly in an upright position. This made the juniors aware that they were dealing with a strong authority, and, most significantly of all, made it so hard to tip the board over that it was no longer worth the effort. My psychology paid off: the tagboard remained erect thereafter.

The greatest challenge to my managerial ability also involved one of my lesser responsibilities; nobody realized how difficult the varsity manager's job could be until I took it. The occasion was the night before the Exeter meet. The coach had asked me to be sure that the lane marker for the meet was tight so that it wouldn't interfere with the swimmers. Determined to make my last moments as manager as perfect as possible, I decided to put the marker in after dinner the night before the meet. Shrinkage would make it as taut as a piano wire by morning.

I asked a friend of mine to help me. We went to the pool and untangled a lane marker, but when we got it in the water, we found it was much too long. I decided that it could not possibly shrink enough in twelve hours to get tight, so we untied the hook at one end and retied it further back on the rope. When we tried to hook it to the side of the pool again, however, we found it would not reach.

Since we had measured the rope carefully beforehand, we concluded that it must be shrinking faster than we had expected, and that therefore the old position of the hook would be all right. But by the time we had changed it back, the rope had shrunk so much that it still would not reach the end of the pool.

There was a spring on one end of the rope, and my friend suggested that if we could stretch the spring far enough, we might be able to get the lane marker installed before it became hopelessly short. We braced our feet and pulled, but it was an impossible task. About this time we noticed that it was eight o'clock when we were supposed to be back at our rooms for the evening.

In desperation we decided to start all over again with another lane marker. We retangled the one we had been struggling with and untangled a new one. Working feverishly (despite the cooling balm of the water), we got both ends of the marker fastened just in time to watch it grow tight before our eyes.

By next morning it was a credit to the school, and not one swimmer from either team got tangled in it. But though there were loud cheers for the victorious Andover team, there were none for the exhausted varsity manager whose greatest personal triumph lay not in winning his letter, but in finishing the season.

ANNUALLY, June after June, they stand in their white flannel pants and their gawky coats on the lawns of the country's top schools .... They look, for all their differences of shorter and taller and fatter and thinner and richer and poorer, pretty much alike. They see, for all the differences of red brick or gray stone or white wood or lakes or hills or rivers, pretty much the same scene. They smell the same disturbing smell of bruised grass and recent rain and penetrating sun. They feel the same unswallowable lump in the throat, the same curious yearning, as of the aspiration of saints and the holiness of soldiers, in the midriff, the same embarrassing tendency to tears. And they think, if they think at all, with the same complete and bewildered aimlessness.

So stood I on a June morning in 1934, bruising the grass of Andover---a schoolboy saint, a schoolboy soldier.

I quote these lines for several reasons.

First of all, the sentences slipped suddenly and silently back into my memory almost at the very moment when I was asked to write this piece about Andover. Word for word, there they were. The fine, flowing phrases were complete---but I could not recall, exactly, the source, nor the date, nor the author. The only recollection I had was that these were the opening lines of an article on America's foremost preparatory schools, leading off with Andover; that the article was published in a prominent national magazine in the mid-1930's, at the time of my own graduation from Andover; and that the author was one of America's most distinguished writers.

As I tried to track down this information, three critics whose literary judgments I respect tremendously---(1) my wife, (2) a former Headmaster of Andover, and (3) the present Dean of the Faculty at Andover---assured me that it was a stupid search in the first place. "That's not very impressive writing," all three echoed one another. "And besides," they agreed, "you yourself can do much better---even you."

At once I denied all this, and for once my modesty was well founded. With the help of several Andover alumni, all of whom hold high sway in certain Manhattan skyscrapers, I finally found out that the article, entitled, "Twelve of the Best American Schools," appeared in Fortune in January, 1936, and that the author was Archibald MacLeish.

Although I felt that the poet had put on paper an accurate and eloquent description of my graduating class at Andover, one statement, of course, did bother me a bit: the assertion that I thought then, if I thought at all, "with complete and bewildered aimlessness."

Then it occurred to me that one personal way to measure the value and success of an Andover education was to look upon my own Andover experiences in the light of the expressed intentions of the school's founder.

There, at the end of the second paragraph of Phillips Academy's original Constitution, signed April 21, 1778, Samuel Phillips wrote that it was his hope "to lay the foundation of a public free school or academy for the purpose of instructing Youth, not only in English and Latin Grammar, Writing, Arithmetic, and those Sciences, wherein they are commonly taught; but more especially to learn them the great end and real business of living."

There is not room here to discuss all these fields of instruction, but I would like to mention at least two as examples, the first and the last: English, and "the great end and real business of living."

Of one thing I am very sure. At Andover I learned to like the English language, to respect it as one of the most massive, and most delicate, instruments ever made by man.

I can still see and smell and hear the blackboard in Samuel Phillips Hall, in the basement classroom where Emory Basford taught elementary English. And now, a quarter of a century later, I still have on my desk many of the books I used then. Right beside Webster's "New International Dictionary," "The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary," Fowler's "Modern English Usage," Roget's "Thesaurus," Bartlett's "Familiar Quotations," and the "Style Book" of the New York Times, stand a battered, paper-bound copy of Basford's "Fundamentals" and an old 1922 edition of "Good Writing---A Modern Rhetoric" by Arthur W. Leonard and Claude M. Fuess, "Instructors in English at Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts."

Andover, too, gave me a chance to practise what my English teachers were preaching. As editor of the Phillipian, I learned quite a few lessons. One of the most vivid was to the effect that the pen, in my hand at least, is not necessarily mightier than the sword (or, in this case, muscles).

Here's what happened---and I have just checked the back-numbers file to be sure of my accuracy. Shortly before the Exeter football game, I traveled (with special permission) to New Haven to cover the Andover-Yale Freshman game. In my first attempt at a sports story, I wrote that "a dispirited Academy team was left stunned by a severe drubbing at the hands of the alert freshmen," that "the Andover line as a whole was weak," and that "the game was marked by fumbles, sloppy tackles, and lack of punch." My purpose, I suppose, was to whip up such a fighting spirit among the players that they would defeat Exeter at the end of the season. They lost to Exeter---and beat me up instead.

Ever since graduation, as it happens, I have spent most of my life outside the United States, struggling not only with French and German and Spanish, but also with Chinese, Hindi, Swahili, and Russian. Simultaneously, my biggest struggle always has been, and still is, with English (particularly at this writing), a kind of combat with wonderful words, half a million in all.

In this connection, I recall a passage from my first-year Russian grammar, in which Lomonosov, Russia's "first scholar," is quoted this way:

"Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, advised the people to speak with God in Spanish; with friends in French; with enemies in German; with ladies in Italian. But if Charles V had known the Russian language, he surely would have said that in Russian one can speak with all-with God, with friends, with enemies, and with the ladies---because in Russian there is the magnificence of Spanish, the vivacity of French, the force of German, the tenderness of Italian, and besides, the richness, expressiveness, and brevity of Greek and Latin."

All this may be true---but both Charles V and Lomonosov, it seems to me, have omitted the greatest and most complex, finely-forged language of all.

As I say, my wrestling with those 500,000 words still goes on---and only the other day I made a special trip to Andover to consult with Emory Basford once again. This time I wanted to find out the difference between descriptive and determinative clauses---that is, when to use "that" and when to use "which." He patiently turned to page 71 of his "Fundamentals," and, as usual, made it all seem very clear. Nonetheless, I have a feeling that correct usage here will always remain for me one of the most perplexing problems that exists in English. Or is it "which"?

As far as the question of "the great end and real business of living" is concerned, my answer is brief and simple. No, at Andover I certainly did not learn what the great end and real business of living really are---but I did learn to want to find out. And a school deserves special credit, I think, if a graduate, twenty-five years later, is still trying.