“The Lost Battalion”

Editor’s note: This story from 1931 contains dated language that is no longer used today. In the interest of keeping a historical record, it appears here as it was originally published.

(The writer of this article recently celebrated his ninetieth birthday. He is one of the two remaining members of his Class, the other being the Rev. Dr. Edward G. Read of Plainfield, N.J., his roommate. The seventieth anniversary of their commencement will occur this June. 

           Dr. Ludlow was one of the junior orators in 1860. He was appointed to deliver the master’s oration in 1864. Later he was honored with the first Litt.D. degree that Princeton ever conferred. For more than a generation he has been a director of the Union Theological Seminary and of this honor he writes, “you may put it down to my virtue or vice as your predilections may suggest.”

           For sixty-seven years he has been a pastor of city churches. In addition he has published a dozen books and is a member of the New York Authors’ Club. His most recent work is Along the Friendly Way which he describes as “an attempt to gather up the wind-strewn leaves of recollection.” He lives at Norfolk, Conn. – Ed.)

I entered Princeton as a sophomore in 1858. My classmates were numerically about equally divided between students from the North and South. Political opinions or prejudices went off at hair-trigger touch; and, from the excited tones of the self-appointed protagonists in the mélée, one might have thought that the Civil War began on the Princeton campus instead of Charleston Harbor. 

           But underneath the surface excitement ran a happier sentiment, — that of the fraternity of our college spirit. The bond of personal friendships had too many strands for easy sundering. When war actually came, political fury became almost a funereal calm. There was a closer grip of the arm as we sauntered to Jug Town or Rocky Hill. There were many sad scenes at the railroad station down by the canal, as our northern groups gave the farewell — generally a hug — as the moving platform of the train creaked its fatal echo of good-bye.

An Erroneous Report

A recent magazine article tells a story of southern students who brought with them to be their caretakers, slaves from their home plantations. The report is incorrect. New Jersey at that time had been for nearly two generations a free state, and any slaves brought into it automatically became free. Besides, the courtesy of the southern students would have prevented any such insult being offered to northern sentiment. The story was perhaps suggested by the fact that there were in Princeton as servants a number of negroes of advanced life, who had been born as slaves. 

           One Jim Johnson reported himself as one hundred years old. He was as canny as a Yankee, drove a good business in selling furniture, and was a favorite attendant of students in time of sickness. I last heard of him in New York as a nurse for one who had been a student at Princeton many years before. That Jim was not always lying about his memory was proved by his answering correctly the name and class of almost anyone he had met during undergraduate days.

           The Class of ’61 may be said to have never had an annual meeting. It is practically “The Lost Battalion” in the Princeton roster.

Guns of Sumter

The most exciting day in our college experience was April 20, 1861. The guns of Sumter and its assailants had, the day before, thundered to the world the news of the disrupted American republic. Fearing some unhappy outbreak of hostility between the different factions of students, the authorities decreed that all recitations and lectures should be observed as usual in the classrooms. This proposed discipline was too much of a strain on our nerves.

           The northern students held a meeting on the roof of Old North. We pulled up the bell rope, erected a strong flagstaff beside the wheat sheaf and unfurled Old Glory to the winds, where some years afterward I saw its last shreds signalling that “our flag was still there.”

           In vain Professor Alexander, one of the the chief scientists of the world, suspended a ten-foot bar od steel, and beat out the academic hours with a sledge hammer. This provoked no response from the belfry. I confess that as one of the speakers on the occasion, I inflated my chest with the conviction that I was really patriotic, in spite of the fact that we found the old Mexican War muskets too monotonously heavy for daily drill on a neighboring field. 

           The only casualty of the day was that of a fellow student from the South, who, after over-imbibing a familiar spirit, attempted with his fiddle to lead a dance on the campus. His chagrin at his misadventure, it is said, almost occasioned his suicide.

           That night a public meeting was advertised in Mercer Hall. Distinguished politicians, uncertain as to which side to cast their lot, tried to address the meeting with cautionary advice. The northern students were irritated by what they heard and themselves took the platform in a pow-wow that would have delighted Comanche chiefs.

The Tooth of Fame

It has been observed by historians that seldom is a world-shaking event due to a single occurrence. The tooth of fame has generally a double root. In searching for proof of this argument I have discovered another significance in the roar of bells and cannon on April 19, 1861. In Peoria, Ill., on that day a babe was born. The parents, who must have been inspired with prophetic horological acumen, foreseeing the future celebrity of the young Hercules on the bed, gave to him a resounding name, which his future biography has applauded. He was called John Grier (Hibben).

           One of the most important institutions of Princeton was President Maclean. I call him an institution. In this, however, he was not known to the ordinary fellows whose love for and intimacy with the President absorbed nearly all their sense of appreciation. But Dr. Maclean had an immense background of character and usefulness of which the passing generations who thronged the campus for four years knew almost nothing.

Platitudinous Impressions

Upon his death I was invited by the faculty to deliver during Commencement week a commemorative address. I agreed to do so on condition that the members of the faculty would furnish me with their estimate of the man with whom most of them had been intimately associated for many years. I found, however, that their impressions of the Doctor were largely platitudinous of his goodness and fidelity, which we students knew so well. 

           My perplexity in gathering information was relieved by an invitation from Dr. Maclean’s brother, Archibald, to spend a day in rummaging through an old bureau, in which had been kept for years, documents largely unknown to the public. 

           I discovered in this old bureau documents which revealed the fact that at a period when the finances of the college hardly supported it, Dr. Maclean, through personal appeals to individuals and churches throughout the state, had raised a half-million dollars, by means of which he secured for the Princeton faculty many of the most noted men of science and literature; thus furnishing our alma mater for a generation of future renown. I also found documentary evidence that, while at the head of an institution for the higher learning, he was also one of the fathers of common school education, to which the boys and girls of towns and villages throughout the state were especially indebted.

           There had been for a long time a fund for the aid of indigent students. This helping hand had been founded by Dr. Maclean, who was its president, vice-president, secretary, treasurer — almost sole contributor to its funds — manager, distributor; indeed, the whole thing. I wish that we undergraduates had known the remarkable background of him whom we only affectionately regarded as dear old Johnnie.

Dr. Maclean’s Shrewdness

Some have doubted Dr. Maclean’s ability as a disciplinarian. I will cite an incident which shows his remarkable shrewdness in dealing with student nature. My informant was one who had attained celebrity as a preacher and pastor, but who, without Dr. Maclean’s method of administering discipline, would, as he said, have gone straight to the devil. During his early experience at Princeton this student had contracted the habit of gaming at cards. One night as he and a neighbor were indulging in this pastime long after midnight, a knock came at the door. Turning an old-fashioned big dictionary over the cards, the young man dreamily pulled the latch-string and said “Come in”; while his comrade concealed himself in the closet. Dr. Maclean entered. He gently rebuked the fellow for wasting the midnight oil; the student protesting that he was preparing for examinations. 

           The Doctor emphasized his apparent interest in the over-fidelity of the student by closing the dictionary and revealing the cards beneath it. Going to the closet he exclaimed, “Ah, you have a visitor!” and gently closed the door so that the hiding form was not clearly recognized. He then bade the student a kindly good night and went away.

           The boy had lied to the President and the President evidently knew it, but had left him alone with his own conscience and sense of shame. “I think,” said my informant, “that I could have endured rustification at the Belvedere parsonage (to which recalcitrant students were sent) or expulsion from the college, but I could not endure being left alone with my conscience. A day or two afterward I went to the President and made a full confession. The Doctor met me with the utmost kindness and said, “Never mind it. I know so well the stock you have inherited, that I was sure you would best solve the question with yourself. Now, don’t think of it again; no one will ever hear of it.”

Diplomacy in Discipline

I doubt if anyone understood more thoroughly the diplomacy of administering discipline than John Maclean. “This,” said my informant, “was the turning point of my entire life.”

           In Dr. Maclean’s early college course he must have been of the roistering sort. His old love of the undergraduate life never changed. He was never so happy as when he could play the part of a detective mingling with the marauders on the campus.

           I was once invited by my venerable pastor, who was a Trustee, to dine with him and meet the President who was his visitor. No two obstreperous undergraduates could have been more hilarious than these old pals in telling their adventures. Dr. Maclean enthusiastically explained a midnight ride, which some of the boys had given him. Hearing a rumpus on the campus he inspected it. The students were running a big baggage van over the campus and down the main street. Detecting, as he imagined, a student hiding in the van, the Doctor suddenly leaped in. He found himself the only occupant, and the midnight ride of Paul Revere was not more exciting as he was jumbled over sidewalks and curb stones until he exclaimed, “If you’ll let me out, I’ll go straight to my office.”

           In telling this at the table, he suddenly realized that one of the students was listening. Turning to me he said, “Now, Ludlow, don’t tell anyone what you’ve heard tonight.” It was not necessary that I should, for the whole town knew it.

           I think of Dr. Maclean with his high hat, long cloak, and gum shoes moving across the campus as I do of Virgil guiding Dante through the Divina Comedia.

           The President was accustomed to invite a group of students to take supper with him on Sunday nights. On one occasion I noticed that the Doctor’s “grace before meat” missed its appropriate commas. It ran thus, — “For what we are about to receive, Rhody, pass the cakes.”

Dr. Cameron’s Wedding

Professor Cameron was being married. The President had warned all the students to avoid passing the house during the happy solemnities. I had inadvertently crossed the forbidden line and heard the President’s reprimand, “Mr. Read, Mr. Read, you will report yourself tomorrow.” Read never reported himself, nor did the Doctor remember his command. Years after I told Dr. Maclean of his mistake on that occasion. “Humph!” replied he. “No mistake at all; for any student is as bad as his roommate.”

           The music for the professor’s wedding supper was somewhat mysteriously provided with a trombone addendum to the usual orchestra, — a horse-fiddle composed of a well rosined fence rail drawn across a dry-goods box, in which performance I had been accused of taking a part. The verdict is according to Scotch law, which at times asserts neither guilty nor innocent, but simply “not proven.”

           I was the innocent custodian of the big tin horn which sounded the note of the Horn’s Spree Revelry in September; that instrument being carefully concealed among the roof rafters of the garret over my head in the old Refectory. The ram’s horns which made the walls of Jericho fall were scarcely more disturbing than the hundreds of tin horns which made Princeotn a bedlam. Door yard fences disappeared; gates between villas and cottages exchanged places; midnight fires illumined the streets until they were put out by the rising sun.

The Homi-Mogi

I do not know if the charter of the ancient and honorable society of the Homi-Mogi has been revoked by constabulary authorities or dissolved by the secession of all its own membership. Doubtless, if either of these things have occurred, some substitute under another name may have taken its place. The Homi-Mogi was composed of older students who welcomed the newcomers irrespective of class. One after another the members would drop in upon the neophyte until his room was well filled with these self-invited guests. Then, each would draw from his pocket a clay pipe filled with the rankest [profanity removed] tobacco purchased north of Mercer St., and attempt to smoke out the host. My roommate and I were favored by a visit from these gentry. One of us, being accustomed to the weed, survived the ordeal; the other went to bed. Among the new students, signals were devised by which we could go in force and frustrate such intrusions. If I remember right, the J.M. owes its demise chiefly to a burly freshman who declared that, while he did not object to any courteous intrusion upon his privacy, he would take occasion to thrash anyone who broke the chivalric rule, even if it took him four years to do it. The freshman’s threat was especially effective because of the fact that he had kicked the round football from the cannon clean over West College. In consequence, it was assumed that, if his arms were as vigorous as his legs, he would be as deadly an antagonist during college years as a visible Nemesis or a Goliath of Gath prowling beyond the borders of Philistia.

“One on Me”

At a late hour one night Dr. Maclean’s doorbell rang. He himself answered the summons. In the shadow of the doorway was the indistinct form of a student, who hastily announced that one of the tutors was “tight” in his room. “Dear me! Dear me!” said the Doctor as he hastened to the disgraceful scene. Sure enough the tutor was “tight” in his room. A strong rope was attached to his door latch, the other end of which was similarly attached to the door-fastening across the hall. The Doctor released him; and was overheard to chuckle to himself, as he went back to his office, words that sounded very much like “that’s one on me.”

           The same tutor was somewhat of a wag. One day in riding across an unguarded bridge he was thrown from his horse into a deep pool of water, from which he was rescued only by the help of a passerby. The following Sunday he attended service at the Methodist Church. The preacher told of the marvellous power of memory in moments of excitement, such as sudden danger of death, when all the event of life would come to one’s mind, as a flash of lightning on a dark night reveals things far and near. Seeing the tutor in the audience and knowing, as everyone did, of the nearly fatal experience, the preacher asked from the pulpit whether the tutor could confirm the theory of the omniscient power of memory at the moment of expected death. The tutor replied that he could not recall all the happenings of his lifetime at what might have been the final moment, but he had very vividly an impression of a momentous thought. “As I was struggling with the possible Lethean water, I wondered if my cigars were wet. I felt for my pocket and grasped the hand that pulled me out.”

The Circle’s Center

In my class was a man noted for his fashionable attired. A flower generally graced his buttonhole. He was the best billiard player in college and had an ability in drawing pictures which might have won him celebrity. He possessed corresponding skill in other respects, but he had too little book knowledge to keep his name anywhere but near the foot of the class. One day in a review of geometrical principles, Professor Duffield called Mr. — to the blackboard. “Draw a circle,” said the professor. The student executed a perfect ring, which brough applause from the class. “Now,” said the professor, “find the center.” The student gazed an instant over the top of his chalk and made a dot on the board. “That’s about it,” said he. A cloud of dust applauded. “I doubt,” said the professor, “if Euclid could have done it better.” The student received our congratulations on the campus with an appreciation that might have gratified the man who took first in mathematics for having corrected a mistake in a badly printed table of logarithms.

           One of our professors had a way of standing rigidly during evening prayers in the chapel, and inspecting the behavior of the audience. One evening as we gathered in the chapel a slip of paper was passed among us, reading. “Every student is request to watch Professor — during prayer.” The professor was bewildered by this sudden bombardment of eye-shots, dropped his chin into his cravat and folded his arms, as there dawned upon him the consciousness that he had never been appointed “Master of Ceremonies” at the Court of Heaven.

Clio and Whig

Our two literary societies, the Clio and Whig, whose buildings, in somewhat renovated form, now sentinel the campus, are in my imagination as I revisit Princeton more suggestive than even the imposing structures which subsequent benefactors have donated to the institution. I know of no course of lectures by a professor which surpassed these literary societies in the preparation they afforded us for after-life. There was something which inspired a young man as he looked upon the portraits of statesmen and other celebrities which adorned the walls. The debates, orations, essays, criticized by one’s fellow students were worth more to us than volumes of rhetoric. The halls were generally thronged on Friday night as nearly all the students belonged to one or the other. The rivalry of the societies kept alive the spirit which best fitted us for our after-contentions in our professions.

           The junior orator contests between the Halls the night before commencement, drew the greatest crowds. Unfortunately, some disorders at the time of the election of the orators suggested to the faculty that they themselves should appoint the speakers. As I now learn that the halls are sparsely attended, I attribute this to the lack of interest in faculty appointments as compared to the award given by one’s fellow students. 

           But I will be accused of garrulity if I continue.

This was originally published in the May 15, 1931 issue of PAW.