The Gavelyte, September 1911

CEDAl{VILLE CUU,E1..;K I (;2 prosaic little ways and really believe the "rustic cackle of our burg, the mur– mur of the world." I am sure if our town people were allow d to run the col– lege exclusively, we would make sorry work of it in a few years; for we would be without stimulus of new life, new faces and different custons. Fortunat ly the college, by bringing young men and young women from other institutions to fill its chairs of instruction, is also filling the desire on the part of the town for something foreign. But right here gl'eat care is needed. For it has fre– quently happened that some of our instructors have reversed the situation and have been most liberally educated by the town instead of the town being edu– cated by them. I am sure I voice the sentiments of this association and of this town when I say that one university cannot furnish enough diversity of in– struction of manners and of customs to meet the requirem nts of this com– munity. Therefore, with all due respect to the powers that be to any in– structors seated here, I earnestly implore that other universities be solicited for our instructors, that from· the variety of the few may be met the re– quil'ements of the many. In that delightful little play of Maeterlinck's, "The Blue Bird", a fairy gives to a child a little green hat with a diamond in the cockade. By adjusting the diamond he can penetrate in to the future and the regions of the unseen. Suppose we turn the diamond and look into the visionary In a few years the present generation of town folks will have passed away and the younger generation who have had the advantages of college education will step into their places. What will be the result? All the farmers, millers, dressmakers, milliners, in short the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker will be college graduates. Even the man who drives the sprinkling wagon will have p:1ss3d thru that mystic:11 experience of college education which is supposed to open up such wonderful opportunities. All the fatal errors which we have been so keen to discern in the town will then be remedied and Cedarville will become a modern Utapia. No longer will our Good Dames lean over back yard fences and speculate as to who will be Prof. Allen's girl next year, or wonder whether the little teacher out at the college is really go– ing to marry that big man, or marvel at the short-sightedness, narrowminded– ness, foolish sentimentality of the boys and girls who day and night walk up and down under the maples and out on college hill: no, we'll have no more such common talk, but instead Plato and Aristotle, Cicero and Epictetus. The allurements of the groceries and drug stores will no more dazzle the sterner sex; no longer will the village fathers seated on crackers barrels hold heated debates as to whether the college is a minister incubator or a matrimonial agency. Granted the quality of the town folk will be improved, the town itself will expand. In 1916 Cedarville will be a hundred years old. We are so near our century mark that we shall use that as a basis of calculation. Supposing there were ten people in Cedarville in 1816 (and there must have been for there were