Saum, Emily

From GWUEncyc

Alumni

“Memories of Student Days at the University 1922 . . . 1924”

I entered Columbian College of the George Washington University as a junior in September, 1922, after spending my freshman and sophomore years at Flora MacDonald College in North Carolina. Howard Clinton [sic] Hodgkins was president of the University my junior year and William Mather Lewis was president when I was graduated in June 1924. Miss Rose was Dean of Woman and Miss Kincannon, Registrar, both years. Our commencement exercises were held in the old Poli’s Theater which was located on Pennsylvania Avenue between 14th and 15th streets, just across the street from the Willard Hotel. I never did see the results of the class pictures which were taken on the east steps of the Treasury Building just before the program started. Fred East sang “My Task” at the Baccalaureate services which were held in a Baptist church on G Street a block or two from the University.

In the quarter-century that has passed I have visited the University almost yearly and I never cease to wonder at the changes that have been made from the red brick residences (everyone with beautiful marble mantles and fireplaces in each room) to the present handsome white structures with all their modern and comfortable conveniences and appointments. Then, “a nation’s heart our campus,” and now a real campus with trees, shrubbery and large beds of roses. I think there is only one building there now that was a part of the college in “my time,” and that is the white building, Columbian House, right on the corner of 21st and G Streets. A street car line went up G Street from 17th to 26th Streets, noisy but convenient and that, too, is no more. Every visit I make calls to mind the opening lines of Matthew Arnold’s poem, “Obermann Once More” (which incidentally we read and studied in Professor Croissant’s English literature class).

My finest hours at the University were those in Dean Wilbur’s classes studying the plays of Shakespeare, the Romantic poets and Browning’s “The Ring and the Book.” The old Lisner Chapel or hall was used as his classroom (his office and Miss Daisy Watkins, his secretary, were off at one end of the long room). The chapel with its “storied windows rightly dight, casting a dim religious light” was a perfect stage setting for our mentor who was so deeply religious. He let his light shine and taught us “the faith that looks through death, in the years that bring the philosophic mind.”

I have been looking, and in vain, for my copy of a literary magazine called, The Pendulum, which one of the classes in English composition published during the winter of 1923-24. This particular issue carried some clever lines about President Lewis, Dean Wilbur and Professors Croissant, Heyser and Bolwell, sung to the tune of “Solomon Levi.” The verse about President Croissant went something like this:

“I’m DeWitt Clinton Croissant, in the class I’m quite a rage,
I’m so clever about the things I say I ought to go on the stage;
The boys think I’m a prophet and the girls think I’m a sage,
I’m DeWitt Clinton Croissant and ought to go to the stage.”

I should like to list the other professors besides Dean Wilbur and Professor Croissant “at whose feet I sat,” and who contributed so much in making my student days memorable: Churchill for English and American history, Heyser for a class or two in education, Giddings for French, Griggs for botany, Richardson for philosophy, Carroll for art appreciation, Smith for history of Greek and Roman literature and Morse for history of the drama.

Memories of GWU would not be complete without mention of the “Bunny Hole,” a cafeteria down in the basement of one of the red brick residences across the street from Lisner Hall. It’s number would be 2022 or 2024 G Street:

“We know a Rabbit Hole just across the way,
Where they serve “dogs” and tea most all day;
Profs as well as pupils fall before its lure,
A Mecca for the hungry, for the blues a cure.”

And the library, then as now, with John Russell Mason. The 1923 Cherry Tree mentions him as the composer of an anthem, “Keep Quiet” and a jazz called, “The Library Blues.”

One more “quote” and then good-bye to fond recollections:

“Here’s to those who’ve gone before to our Alma Mater glorious,

And the spirit that’s victorious

At our George Washington.”

Document Information

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Photographic Credit: n/a
Author or Source: Ms. Emily Saum, A.B. 1924, was the first place winner in a “Student Memories” contest; taken from GWU Alumni Review, August 1950
Document Location: University Archives
Date Added to Encyclopedia: December 11, 2006
Prepared by: Lyle Slovick, Assistant University Archivist

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