Wellesley News
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! — — College IFlews. Vol. 6. No. 14. WELLESLEY, MASS., WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 23, 1907. Price, 5 Cents. A NEW YEAR'S LETTER. days. The rains descended and the winds his arising. But we did not linger in blew the next morning—a good wet day Cairo, hoping to see it later, and hastened Luxor, Upper Egypt, on to this center of the world, this to see the Aquarium and Dr. Dorhn, the city New Year's Day, 1907. which was mistress of learning and of art is director. celebrated naturalist, who its before Rome was dreamed of, the I have two cable messages to thank my hundred- Our Alice Freeman Palmer Fellow was a gated Thebes. And here we are, and hope dear girls for—one from the first Student student at the Naples Zoological Station to stay a while. Here is the Temple of Government meeting of the year, and one Ammon, one of the wonders of the world, last year, and our Professor Willcox, if I on Christmas Day, from the Dean in be- with its papyrus columns like great bundles mistake not, has done research work in it. of reeds ; its walls engraved with half of the whole college. I hope you did the hymn We had not time to go to Pompeii, but of Pentaur, the royal scribe, celebrating not have the difficulty I had in sending spent a long afternoon in the Museum, the triumph of Rameses II over the my Christmas greetings from Alexandria. Hittites. He is supposed to be the where the chief treasures are. The lovely "Etats Unis, Etats Unis?" the puzzled Pharaoh who knew not Joseph, the Pha- Capua Venus is there, and the bronzes roah of the oppression. Here official questioned; and then, with an air he stands found in the villas of great men, and the and sits in statues forty feet high. In of pleased discovery, "C'est Brazil!" long gallery of portrait busts—Homer, front of the Temple rises the splendid We landed in Egypt just two weeks ago obelisk, whose mate Napoleon took as his looking so like our dear Edward Everett to-day. The autumn had been spent most precious trophy to Paris, where many Hale one feels like speaking to him, and of you have seen it in the Place quietly on the shore of Lake Geneva; a de la Con- Socrates with his round face and pug nose, corde. A little farther down the Nile is month in charming Vevey, and a month of and the smiling, merry lips, yet the lips Karnak, the shrine the three gods high up on the mountainside. Chillon Ammon, the All-father, Mut, the Mother, that drank the hemlock without a quiver. everyone knows, but the Chateau de and Khons, the Son. This is the Theban Such lifelike faces they are, they might be triad, the three-life principles. How shall Blonay and Chastelard, in some ways even met on Boston Common to-day. I tell you of the great avenue of sphinxes more beautiful, of these one seldom hears. leading to the entrance? Ram-headed, The less said of the voyage the better. The quaint mountain villages are full of sitting creatures they are with the body The_ Mediterranean ought to be blue and life and interest. It is the canton de Vaud, of a lion, close together, ah endless pro- calm, with soft and gentle waves. It can cession. And once past the Pylon, col- famous in mediaeval annals, with strife be, as we found, wild and tempestuous, umns and pillars and in the center the sis- of reformers, and the seething of new ideas. ters of that beautiful obelisk known as and our ship we discovered was nicknamed Here two Charles the First's judges took Cleopatra's needle, which is now on the the "Rolling Billy," and was famous for refuge,' and were protected from the de- Thames embankment. Here are, . be- dishes upsetting passengers ginnings, foundations, in the kistoryjof mands of his son that they should be de- smashing and From this great temple the funeral —a reputation she quite lived up to on our man. livered to vengeance. And here in pre- cortege of kings took its way across the trip. Stromboli saluted us in passing with historic days were the lake-dwellers, those Nile to that city of the dead, to which the mysterious primeval men, whose remains a globe of fire, a splendid sight in the dusk road of the sphinxes leads. Charon lit- of a dark and stormy day. erally rowed across the Styx, and there are baffle the efforts of learning to place them those who say that Jupiter is simply a And then Alexandria! in time. came Palm translation of Ammon-Ra. The All- Then came an enchanted fortnight; the trees, and camels and blue-robed slender father was adored in all his manifestations, first day through the Simplon Tunnel in figures with white turbans on their heads, and in course of time—how much time there has been in this land the unity was seventeen minutes to Milan, where we and the few women in the streets moving — forgotten, and each attribute became a along, lodged in the very shadow of the cathedral. furtively veiling their faces with deity; the First Cause was merged in the After a few days there, to Florence, over their black shawls, or with a queer bit of intermediate. the mountains and through Bologna, where yellow box-wood strapped across the fore- One comes back to the present with al- most an effort from these great achieve- one longed to stop. I know Florence well, head, from which the veil hung just below ments of the past. The stately figures of and it was a delight to tread its familiar the eyes. It is the mouth, apparently, patriarchs move in the streets; the Nile streets again and stand at the foot of the which has to be covered, not the eyes. flows in its yellow flood as it has for thou- wonderful Campanile. Our Lady of the How can one ever forget the first journey sands of years ; the turquoise blue of these changeless skies looks down on the dust Flower was never more lovely, or in such a land! Camels were stalking dis- her city from which man was made. One has new more fascinating. You must get Miss dainfully about the fields sometimes hid- measures of time, new standards of value. Jackson and Mr. Macdougall in Billings den almost entirely under loads of straw, this is world, Hall Library to show you some books I so that just their noses and their legs were For the Time was not and is, sent over from there. Then came Rome visible; buffaloes turned the great wheels The grave and life's bliss with a service in St. Peter's and a drive on which brought the life-giving water; don- Together are furled. the Appian Way, that road of the dead, keys went pattering about, sadly shaking thick set with memorials, the most beau- their long ears over the hardness of their Here's old, and here's new. tiful of which is the garlanded tomb of lot. Through cotton and sugar fields the In the old write your name. Cecilia Metella, a woman greatly beloved. train sped, through mud villages shaded It still is the same. And what if it grew The Campagna with its ruined aqueducts with palms, and in a quick three hours, looked old and wonderful to us, and Miss like shadows against the blue sky, rose Just to be only one, Bates' enthusiasm rose when for the first the Pyramids One in each, one in all, time we saluted Father Tiber. But we We went to see them the next day In great and in small, did not know then what was in store for those vast structures which had known While centuries run' us! A lovely six-hours' railway journey forty centuries before the Christian era For on Christmas Day brought us to Naples, with a beautiful sun- began. And in the sand, half buried at Life itself comes to birth set on the bay and Capri glowing in the their foot, lies the sphinx, with the calm, To encompass the earth. distance. It was fortunate we had that, majestic face and the blind, searching eyes, The Truth, and the Way! for that was all the sun we had in our two looking always to the east for the sun in Caroline Ha/.ard. : U COLLEGE NEWS the plans of the architect. They were planned for our pleasure by Mr. and Mrs. College IRews. NOVELTIES Durant. In accordance with Mr. Durant's ex- Press of N. A. Lindsey i Co.. Boston. in JEWELRY press wish, there is no picture or statue of him in College Hall, but there are in- Published weekly. Subscription price, $1.00 a numerable little conveniences and luxu- non-resident. year to resident and and SILVER ries which we have come to take as a All business correspondence should be addressed to Miss Florence Plummer, Business Manager College matter of course, which are in truth, the News. „. best sort of memorial of the personality Elisa- All subscriptions should be sent to Miss and painstaking love of the founder of beth Condit. St. 41 Summer Welleslev. Editor-in-Chief, Alice TV. Farrar, 1908 BOSTON. Associate Editor, Elizabeth Andrews, 1908 Literary Editors. NOTICE. Leah Curtis. 190S Estelle E. Littlefield, 190S Agnes E. Rothery. 1909 Copy for College News should be in Alumna Editor, off in of our the hands of the editors by Friday noon Weed.