Bookish Rollins

Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla., is that State's oldest educational institute. Last week it celebrated its 44th anniversary.

At Rollins, literature is stressed nowadays. Its president, Hamilton Holt, a onetime editor of the Independent, is distantly related to the publishing Holts of Henry Holt & Co., Manhattan. Perhaps that is why the Rollins' celebration, last week, was in the nature of a literary forum. President Holt presided, assisted by Edwin Osgood Grover, "Professor of Books.''

Poems were read by Poets Cale Young Rice (Stygian Freight), Clinton Scollard (Epic of Golf, Songs of Summer), Willard Austin Wattles (The Funston Double Track), Jessie Belle Rittenhouse (wife of Clinton Scollard [The Lifted Cup]). None of the reading poets were Rollins alumni.

There was an alumni reunion, and kudos. Presiding over the reunion was Alumnus Rex Beach. Kudo receivers were: Actor Fred Stone (Doctor of Humanities) ; Operasinger Marie Sundelius (Doctor of Music); Inventor Henry Herman Westinghouse (Doctor of Science); E. W. Rollins (descendant of Founder Rollins, Doctor of Laws).

President Holt, onetime editor, still looks more like a newspaperman than a college president. He is energetic, sometimes embarrassingly outspoken. In 1927 he engendered a brief furore in educational circles by suggesting the abandonment of "the pretense of amateurism" in college athletics.