The Farm in the Green Mountains

by Alice Herdan-Zuckmayer

  In the meantime, however, I received a supplementary ration card as a farmer because I began to sell eggs, goat milk, chickens, ducks, and geese in Hanover. I set my sales location near the library, and Mr. Rugg was pleased and satisfied.

  In 1943, in the middle of the war, when I received permission to accompany an American friend on her 3,000-mile trip clear across the country to California, I sent Mr. Rugg a redwood root from San Francisco. It was a little root of one of the giant trees of the western forests. Tunnels large enough for auto traffic are cut through their trunks. They grow over one hundred thirty feet high and live to the venerable age of nine hundred or more years. Whether this little scion of a giant tree has taken root in Mr. Rugg’s eastern garden, or perhaps in a flower pot in his office, I haven’t asked. Possibly, when I come back, I will see the beginning of a tree, for Mr. Rugg is a magician with plants, as well as having a good hand for books.

  Downstairs there is also a section of medical books, a photostat copying room, and a large room under the entrance hall where students can read specially assigned books. The walls of this room are covered with paintings by a modern Mexican artist. We are told to have patience and to study them thoroughly before rejecting them. I have studied them thoroughly, but I have little patience, and I avoid this room. All the rooms that I have described are for getting books, for studying and thinking, or for relaxing.

  But there is still the core of the library, made up of the nine levels where the books are kept. The Americans call these “stacks,” a word that means to arrange in layers, heap or pile up, and is sometimes used in connection with piles of bricks or hay in barns.

  You go to these stacks to look for books. The process is very simple. In the card catalog in the entrance hall you look under the title or the author of the book you want. Then you write down the call number on a slip of paper, perhaps H 26 R 322C. Next to the door leading into the stacks is a large directory sign, where you can see that H (History) is on the sixth level, while 26 indicates which bookcase holds the book. R is the first letter of the author’s name, and 322C is the number of the book on the shelf and indicates further that it is the so-and-so-many-eth book by the same author. Sometimes you find the letter “q” or “f” on the catalog card. That means: Look out! This book is of unusual size, quarto or folio, and will be on a special shelf big enough to hold such books. In addition, there are directories by each of the stairways, in case you forget what you read on the large directory sign at the entrance.

  Since the library stands on a slope, as I mentioned before, you come from the entrance hall, which seems to be at ground level, into the fourth floor of the stacks. There are three levels of stacks below, three above. Each level is eight feet high, and on the right and left are stairs connecting the levels. On each level there are three corridors, two wide ones which are lighted by a row of windows where there are desks and tables, and a narrow one in the middle between the bookshelves. These corridors are like three parallel roads, connected by eleven crossroads lined with books on dark green iron shelves from floor to ceiling. On the end of every bookcase are again numbers showing what books are to be found there and indicating precisely the geometric position of every volume. The middle corridors and the alleys between the shelves are illuminated by many electric lights that you turn on yourself and should turn off as you leave. On the north wall of every level are seven open cubicles with tables and chairs where you can look over the books or read them before checking them out and taking them home. On the second and third levels the cubicles are closed for students who want to concentrate on their work and study without interruption. Finding books is not difficult after you master the system. But then comes the best part—the book you are looking for is surrounded by books you didn’t know about, or have forgotten, or that you perhaps knew once and now find again.

  Sometimes, when I had worked in my room on the tenth level for eight or nine hours and was tired, I went down and wandered through the avenues and alleyways of books, stopped where I wanted to, drew out a book, leafed through it, and laid it on one of the tables so that I could look into it again when I pleased.

  Books that have been taken from the shelves should be piled up on tables so that they can be replaced correctly by trained hands and not exposed to the danger of accidental misplacing. Every morning a staff of young people is busy putting books back in the places where they belong so that they can be found again.

  So I go through the stacks, look at the books, taste many, and sometimes find a new friend. And as I go through the rows of hundreds of thousands of books, I think these are all mine to use. These belong to me, to the students, to the professors, and to the visitors who come to the library. It is this feeling of common property, or of the possession of the unusual by the common people, that underlies the fact that hardly anyone wants to take anything away and keep it. Theft is not a problem in the library and does not have to be taken into consideration. In my rounds I go down to the third and fourth stacks, where the alleyways are lit by bluish fluorescent lights on the ceilings.

  Here are the Greeks and Romans, the old geographers that reported about the Island of Thule and the Amazons. Here stagecoach travelers tell about the Alps, rickshaw travelers about China, and flyers about the South Pole. Here is the fall of Rome and the rise of Christianity. Here are the biographies, from Alexander the Great to Bernard Shaw and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Here are the Russians in their anarchist and religious, Christian and terrorist, pacifist and revolutionary writers, represented up to the recent Soviet comedies and plays. Here is Shakespeare in old and new editions, in all interpretations, appearing in all his different characters. Here are the English, from Beowulf to Priestley.

  Here are the Germans, from the Ulfilas Bible through the editions of classical and romantic writers to Barlach’s “Blauer Boll.” No stop is made with the modern writers. They stream in, newer and newer, without end or censorship.

  In the fall of 1945, Nazi books arrived: novels, magazines, school-books, poetry. They were sorted and set out. A small display of them was put together in the glass cases in the entrance hall. There were no propagandists among them, no goose-step display. They were legitimate books like Mein Kampf, a Rosenberg, a Ludendorf, poems by Schirach, photographs of the Führer, German magazine pictures of the war. The aggressive titles, the ugly Führer, the poor-quality printing all drew amazed comments and derision from the students. In another case were pictures from German magazines, mostly nature shots, and they called forth admiration.

  The books are all here, the Americans, the French, the Scandinavians, the Dutch, and the Italians, the Russians, the Indians, the Chinese, and the Spanish. Here are the masses of people of all eras in their literature and their history. Here are religion, law, music, folklore, the sciences, agriculture, fishing and hunting, sports, technology, detective stories. Everything is arranged, but not abridged and not selected. The students to whom this library has been given are to search, choose, and decide for themselves what they want to do with it. The older generation does not want to rule the younger, and the young people do not fear their elders.

  When the Dartmouth College library was dedicated, the librarian made a speech:

  Every achievement of the human spirit is based chiefly on faith.

  Those who planned this library planned it with faith, they worked into its very fabric certain beliefs which none can prove, which I will not argue.

  They believed that more and more Dartmouth will teach that all things are interlocked about a central reality. Therefore they planned to place the building so that it might be at the heart of the campus, yet so that related buildings could be grouped about it; to draw in all the books of the college; to keep the books for the most part central in the building, and not dispersed.

  They believed that to surround boys with beauty is good— a part of their education. Therefore, of certain rooms, the design, color, and furnishings were studied as problems in the creation of beauty.

  Th
ey believed that students should be given a chance to – acquire the habit of reading, as a resource for leisure, as the surest way to retain a keen and useful mind; therefore, the Tower Reading Room is an experiment in the cultivation of the reading habit.

  Of the background of these beliefs—of a central reality of beauty, of the best of the heritage of the past—the tower is the symbol, for Dartmouth an inspiration, for the world a sign.

  VOX CLAMANTIS IN DESERTO

  One day I went to the reference desk and asked what the weather vane on the tower meant.

  I had regarded it for a long time as an unusual rooster with bristling feathers and without a head.

  They showed me the bookplate of the library books, and at the same time I learned a few things about the founding and history of Dartmouth College, a remarkable and unique story.

  As soon as I looked at the bookplate I saw that it was the same scene as the one on the weather vane.

  There is a pine, forty feet tall, and under it is a cask, and next to the cask is a tree stump, and on the tree stump sits a man. The man has on buckled shoes and a long coat, and his long hair is tied back. He has raised his right arm and holds up the index finger of his right hand. In his index finger is not the inflexibility of a warning about or against something. In its position (one might almost call it movement, even though it is cast in iron), in the gesture of his arm and hand, which extends from a large sleeve with a wide cuff, but above all in his index finger lies the wagging, illustrating, expansive gesture of teaching.

  In front of him sits a strange pupil. He squats on the ground with crossed legs. On his head are two feathers, and he has in his mouth a long pipe, which he holds with both hands, as though he wanted to play the flute.

  This is the iron weather vane of Dartmouth. The seal of Dartmouth has, however, this inscription: vox clamantis in deserto.

  And this is the history of Dartmouth, as I heard it, and as I read it. It belongs so much to the land and people, and is so much bound up with our landscape, the severity of the weather, the perseverance and tenacity of the people, that I want to report it as proof and example of everything that I have told so far.

  There was a man, and his name was Eleazar Wheelock, a well-known pulpit orator, pamphleteer, polemicist, and above all the founder and owner of a school for Indians in the state of Connecticut.

  His dream, his wish, and his goal were to some extent uncommon: he wanted, instead of attacking, demoralizing, or killing the original inhabitants of America, to civilize, educate, and teach them.

  His plans were not limited to founding a school in which the Indians could be taught the ABC’s, Christianity, and to sit on benches. Mr. Wheelock’s plan was no more and no less than to create a college, a real university, for Indians and whites.

  How the money for it was raised, how the location for the college was found, and in what way it developed comprises one of the most unusual histories of a place of higher education.

  In the founding documents of Dartmouth is written:

  In the name of King George we do of our special grace, certain knowledge and mere motion, ordain, grant & constitute that there be a college erected in our said province of New Hampshire by the name of Dartmouth College for the education & instruction of Youth of the Indian Tribes in this Land in reading, writing & all parts of Learning which shall appear necessary and expedient for civilizing & christianizing Children of Pagans as well as in all liberal Arts and Sciences; and also of English Youth and any others, . . . and not excluding any Person of any religious denomination whatsoever from free & equal liberty & advantage of Education or from any of the liberties and privileges or immunities of the said College on account of his or their speculative sentiments in Religion, & of his or their being of a religious profession different from the said Trustees of the said Dartmouth College.

  First must be reported how the money was raised to make it possible to found a university.

  Mr. Eleazar Wheelock had friends in New England who were enthusiastic about the pious plan to convert and educate the wild Indians.

  The main plan consisted of winning over the powerful Earl of Dartmouth and securing his help. The two emissaries Mr. Wheelock chose to send to England were an unusual pair.

  One was Nathaniel Whitaker, a handsome, tall, and stately man, a pugnacious champion of God with an unbendable will and potent stubbornness, a Presbyterian from Princeton College.

  The other emissary was Samuel Occom, a full-blooded Indian from the tribe of the Mohicans in Connecticut.

  It took forty-five days for the two to get to England. Bad storms delayed their journey, and they finally reached London the evening of February 6, 1766.

  The sensation that they aroused was enormous, but, as far as Occom’s diaries report, he didn’t notice the excitement that he caused, or it made no impression on him. Samuel Occom went with the feather-light step of the Indian in woods and prairies through the streets of London. His smooth black hair fell over his shoulders onto his black clerical garb, and his copper-colored face rose calm and unmoved from the dark priestly garment with its white bands under the chin.

  Indeed, the sensation that he made was so great that he was soon thereafter portrayed in the theater in a comedy, something which amazed him.

  The only thing that made an impression on Occom was the wild activity in London on the holy Sabbath day, and he wrote about it in his diary: “Last Sabbath Evening I walk’d with Mr. Whitaker to Cary a letter to my Lord Dartmouth and Saw Such Confution as I never dreamt of, there was some at Churches Singing and Preaching, in the Streets Some Cursing, Swearing and Damming one another, others was holloaing, Whestling, talking, gigling, and Laughing, and Coaches and footmen passing and repassing, Crossing and Cress-Crossing, and the poor Begers Praying Crying and Beging up on their Knees.”

  The success of Occom, the Indian in clerical garb, was decisive. Lord Dartmouth received him and undertook the patronage of the future university, gave it his name, and started the subscription list with fifty pounds.

  Reverend Whitaker, who had a good head for advertising, did the organizing, and Occom preached. He preached in England from more than three hundred pulpits. It is said that he even preached before the king. Whether this really happened is not certain, but it is well documented that the king donated two hundred pounds.

  Occom, it is said, preached with the natural eloquence and vividness of the redskin. He drew a visionary picture of the great conversion of all the Indian tribes, and his listeners donated money and gave gifts and helped him in his mission.

  The gifts came from all levels of society, from the king to the peasant. There were rich, eccentric merchants, like fat Mr. Thornton, who later gave Mrs. Wheelock a state carriage so that she could drive through the wilderness in style.

  There were people who were entered in the lists in the following manner:

  1 widow 5 shillings

  2 widows 16 shillings 2 pence.

  There were, however, also setbacks. The Archbishop of Canterbury said, “as the Dissenters did not help us, neither will we help them,” and Whitaker reported that the Bishop of Gloucester “would not give us a penny nor ask us to sit down!”

  Finally they had a list with 2,500 names on it, and as the two emissaries reached America again two years later in April 1768, they brought with them, to the glory of God and for the good of the Indians, eleven thousand pounds, an uncommonly large amount in those times.

  Meanwhile, Mr. Wheelock had been looking for a piece of land in America. He did not want to stay in the state of Connecticut, since he held that it was wiser to begin the new school in the wilderness, in the midst of the Indians’ accustomed surroundings.

  The road of suffering that Mr. Wheelock now had to traverse, the animosity which he met, the scorn and the setbacks, a less single-minded and stubborn man could not have borne. But Mr. Wheelock must have been that type of New Englander that cannot be bent or broken.

  In 1765 Governor Wentworth of New Hampshir
e had promised him five hundred acres of land.

  In 1770 matters were far enough along for Wheelock to undertake an eight-week journey into the northern woods in the spring to find the right place for his university. When he had found the right place, a storm of indignation broke around him from those who had thought of a different place or those who thought they had been overlooked in the choice of location.

  Wheelock was pointed out, insulted, and slandered as a fantasist and traitor who was interested only in his own gain. His answer was: “The site for Dartmouth College was not determined by any private interest or party on earth, but was the Redeemer’s choice.”

  With that it should be noted that the first president of Dartmouth College was of the unalterable opinion that he and the Almighty stood on such excellent footing that no power on earth could ever come between them.

  At the beginning of August, Eleazar Wheelock got under way and took with him a couple of workmen, a loaded oxcart, one teacher, and one student northward along the Connecticut River, over which there were no bridges, and which had to be crossed in Indian canoes.

  This trip through the wilderness was later put into song by a Dartmouth student, who made the historical error of believing that the keg of rum was in Mr. Wheelock’s baggage, while it was actually transported later in Mrs. Wheelock’s caravan. The verse runs:

  Oh, Eleazar Wheelock was a very pious man:

  He went into the wilderness to teach the Indian,

  With Gradus ad Parnassum, a Bible and a drum,

  And five hundred gallons of New England rum.

  Mr. Wheelock and his company fought their way through the thick forest along the wearisome paths, and it was a great effort to reach their chosen place through the mountainous land.

  There on a high plateau stood, it is reported, forty-foot-tall pines, a forest so dense that the sun could not shine on the floor except at midday when it stood at the zenith. However, the tall trees also kept the storms off, and in the dimness of the forest, they say, it was as still as in a cathedral. Only the growling of bears, the howling of wolves, the screaming and crying of lynxes, and the snarling of panthers sometimes broke the stillness.