The year I joined them I found each member of the class had read Caesar during the summer vacation, taking examination and passing in September in order that the class might go on with the required amount of Cicero in the first semester and Vergil in the second, and so make college the next fall, with four years of Latin done, and done thoroughly in two years. With Vergil at nine in the morning (after submitting to ten minutes of spelling drill on any word Miss Spalding might find in Dr. Johnson’s Rasselas), and again at four in the afternoon we read rapidly enough to get the charm of the poem as well as the dry bones of vocabulary and construction. All the work of the year was strenuous but full of delight—the happiest year of all my school life.
The primitive conditions of a pioneer school only added zest to the students, but for those teachers who had come out of the East the barn-like hotel in the desert, the lack of comforts and conveniences, even of sufficient food, and the meager salaries possible meant hardship.
One of the institutions of our day was the bus which met students from Pomona who came to North Pomona on the “dummy,” which I recognized as the discarded, first means of transportation between Long Beach and the outside world. Down there it had been known as the G. O. P., “Get Out and Push,” because frequently the male passengers had to dismount and help propel it when it hesitated in its progress from Thenard, the junction on the main S. P. line near Wilmington, to the little camp-meeting settlement on the bluff, Long Beach. When it was superseded there it evidently had been transferred to the remote service between Pomona and the new Santa Fe railroad to the north of the town.
The bus was very rickety, two long seats whose cushions sprouted excelsior, a somewhat tremulous canopy top, a rear step that swung loose so that it required great skill to mount, especially since there was a hole in the floor where one would naturally place one’s foot in entering. It must have been a gift bus, into whose mouth one must not look enquiringly.
Bret Harte, a high, bony, bay horse, and Amos Obediah Jonah Micah, a roly-poly squat sorrel were the mis-mated pair who provided locomotion. I was once told that the bones of one of these horses is preserved in the college museum, but an after thought on the part of the informer, suggested that the historic skeleton might have upheld one of the steeds celebrated a year or two later,—Bismarck or Gladstone or Mephistopheles. Speaking of the latter reminds me of a story once current in Claremont concerning a conversation between the heads of the Latin and Greek departments. “I can make a pun on any word you will propose,” said Professor Colcord. “How about the name of my horse?” replied Professor Norton. Quick as a wink came the response, “If I had him here I could hit him with me-fist-awful-easy.”
My year in Claremont was an unusually rainy one, and for a time all the lower part of town was under water from outbreaking springs. It was welcomed by John McCall, the boy who drove the bus, as a providential means of extending the usefulness of the public conveyance. Every night he took the bus to the point now called the corner of Second Street and Alexander Avenue, unhitched Bret and Amos, and left it standing in the water all night, so that the rims of the wheels might swell enough to retain the tires the next day.
On Sundays the bus must forego its day of rest in order to take Claremont to Pomona to church, the former town not yet having a church of its own. We enlivened the long, slow drive home, more than an hour in our slow-going chariot, with calling up memories of all the good things to eat we had ever known or imagined. We were none too well fed at best and Sunday dinner came late. It is certain that we did not suffer from over-feeding, but, on the other hand, I suppose our minds were all the clearer for our restrained diet.
This was the time of the beginning of things. The Pomona College Literary Society—high sounding name—had begun its career. Debates, papers, three-minute ex-tempore speeches were taken seriously. One gala day in spring we turned to Mother Goose and treated her works in the same manner in which we had been handling Shakespeare. One number on the program was a debate on “Was the mother justified in whipping Jill on the occasion when she and Jack went for water?” I remember it well for I defended Jill in opposition to David Barrows. It was the first time that either of us had delivered a speech without notes. Unfortunately, I lost—but who could expect to win against the eloquence and, I maintained at the time, the sophistry of an embryo University President? However, it was a split verdict and one of the judges resisted his plausible arguments and gave credit to the weight of my feminine defense of poor Jill. (Thank you, Dr. Sumner!) The debate was great fun.
This year the college paper was born, and christened the Pomona Student. It was a monthly, and, considering that it was conducted by preparatory students, compares very well with its later representative, even if I, who was its maid-of-all-work, do say so.
There was a music department, with Miss Stella Fitch as teacher. During the next few years music became quite a feature, and its quality is recalled with pleasure and regret in these days of prevailing jazz.