Widow of Posterity

But for one event, there would have been little excitement at Amherst College last week when Dr. Stanley King, able lawyer-businessman, was inaugurated nth president. Few days before the ceremonies. Amherst was quiet. Seniors sat on their fence, as only they may do. Somewhere about was "Dean"' Burns, the campus character who imagines he is the dean of Amherst, of Smith, of Mt. Holyoke. Many a student walked over to nearby Smith, whose ladies observe "They're mild but they satisfy." Then all over Amherst went the tantalizing news that Sabrina had been on view. Not only that, but Sabrina had been photographed, in the company of President King. Was it possible that Sabrina would reappear for the inaugural?

A 400-lb. bronze statue, nude and nearly life-sized, representing the waternymph in Milton's Comiis, Sabrina was presented to Amherst College in 1857 by one Joel .Hayden. For her nudity Sabrina became the object of many a practical joke. In 1890 the college authorities ordered her removed. Soon there began a series of frantic, tenacious, solemn battles over Sabrina, between the odd-numbered and even-numbered classes. She was first captured and hidden away in 1893. Thereafter Sabrina became known as the ''Goddess of Lord Jeffs." There arose Sabrina-traditions. Those in possession were "Sabrina Men" and must keep the statue hidden, appointing annually two men to watch over her. They gave annual banquets, with the status present, singing:

All hail, Sabrina dear,

The widow of each passing year.

Long may she ever be

The widow of posterity.

It was the aim of "Non Sabrina Men" to recapture Sabrina. They too had a Sabrina song:

You're from the early days,

You have immoral ways,

So hear our verdict true:

To hell with Sabrina,

To hell with you!

Sabrina has been hidden in the jail at Litchfield, Conn., in the Connecticut River, in a safety deposit vault, in a farmer's dung heap. Once a plucky Non Sabrina Man forged a receipt to get her out of an express office in Springfield. Mass. Sabrina has been taken to Europe. Sabrina Men are supposed to show the statue once or twice a year, announcing it beforehand so that students may turn out at night with torches. Sabrina is shown briefly in an automobile which speeds away at once, with other automobiles in hot pursuit. The even classes have held Sabrina more often than the odd, but the odds captured her in June 1925 and have held her since, showing her only once in public, at a baseball game in 1927. Last year Dwight Whitney Morrow Jr. showed Sabrina briefly at a class dinner.

Dr. Stanley King is an odd, of the class of 1903. Last week Amherst was amazed to view him, first Amherst president ever to be photographed with Sabrina (see cut). Also photographed were the two odd class presidents, Robert E. Marshall '33 and Kendall B. DeBevoise '35. None of them would tell where the photograph was taken.

To see Dr. King inaugurated, and with an eye for Sabrina, came Calvin Coolidge, Amherst trustee. Governor Joseph Buell Ely of Massachusetts. Walter Lippmann, and many another notable including two onetime Amherst presidents: Dr. Arthur Stanley Pease who retired last year to teach Latin at Harvard, and Dr. Alexander Meiklejohn, now at Wisconsin, whom Stanley King helped ease out of Amherst in 1924. President King urged self-discipline upon his students, said he was against "coddling," would relax rules against motor cars but require attendance at morning chapel. Of Sabrina he said not a word, nor did any one last week get a look at the old statue, now dented and noseless.

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