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WHILST America has made history
rapidly, it has been careless in its preservation. The celebration
of the National Centennial especially directed attention to this fact.
Colleges are by no means exceptions to this general statement. Few
of them have at command the material for a satisfactory history. Many
of the facts concerning the earlier history of Dickinson College have been
lost. A few have recently been rescued, together with many of National
and State history, from the paper-stock of a rag-man's loft, and there are
many scattered documents of equal interest. This little sketch of the
College, written under heavy press of other duties, currente calamo,
is in no sense a complete history, and no regard has been paid, in its preparation,
to symmetrical treatment. But fragmentary and incomplete as it is,
it is, perhaps more of a history of the College that has as yet appeared,
and will serve, at least, as a nucleus around which to accumulate the material
for a more satisfactory account of the College, perhaps by the date of its
Centennial — 1883. An Alumni Record, containing the prominent facts
in the life of each Alumnus would, in that connection, be of the highest
interest, and if undertaken in time, with the hearty cooperation of all the
friends of the College, might be completed by the date mentioned.
The separate and fuller treatment
of the history of the Scientific Department of the College, has its explanation
in the suggestion of such a history as a possible auxiliary in carrying out
a resolution of the Board of Trustees, authorizing the writer to raise funds
for the erection of a new building for scientific purposes. In the
course of investigation, in that direction, facts of more general interest
manifested themselves, and the plan was expanded so as to incorporate many
of them.
As descriptions, with statements
of dimensions, convey but feeble impressions in regard to the character,
size, and surroundings of buildings, pictorial representation of these essential
features of a college has been attempted by the aid of photography.
The photographs, printed as they have been, in the laboratory, by amateurs,
at odd intervals, in large numbers, are not given as specimens of the art,
but it is hoped that they may serve, at least, as satisfactory notes to
the alumni and friends of the College. The plate of the case of apparatus
is given on account of the scientific interest attached to the historic pieces
it includes.
By the favor of Harpers & Brothers,
it has been possible to present the the excellent portrait of Doctor Durbin.
C. F.H.
DICKINSON COLLEGE, June, 1879
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