the Pompanoosuc River road, which leads the way farther to those beautiful little mountain lakes, Fairlee and Morey. Dartmouth, in brief, is rich in its surrounding spots of beauty.

The Outing Club organizes and codifies these trips and has established huts at strategic points. Work also is continued each year on the establishment of camps penetrating north to the White Mountains. The ambition is eventually to open communications as far north as the Dartmouth Grant, a track of virgin wilderness owned by the college near the Canadian line.

The club now controls the cabin and land at Moose Mountain; two cabins and land at Cube Mountain; a cabin and land at Farmington Pond; a cabin and land at Glen Cliff and the Agassiz Basin; it owns the sky-line farm at Middleton, New Hampshire, as well as ski-jumps and toboggan-slides in the wonderful Vale of Tempe at Hanover. The cabins are constantly kept in order, supplied with blankets and cooking-utensils, and stocked with fire-wood. The club maintains seventy miles of well-marked trail from Hanover to North Woodstock, and conducts trips to points of interest in a five-mile radius of Hanover twice a week throughout the year. There is an occasional long trip to the cabins as well as an annual ski trip to the Green Mountains and one to Mt. Washington in the White Mountains, in which ski-runners from Canadian and other universities participate.

There is an annual ski-relay race with McGill University, alternating between

Montreal and Hanover, and club members are entered in various winter meets at North Woodstock, Vermont, Newport, New Hampshire, and at Williams

town.

A winter carnival at Dartmouth is an extraordinary function, and the visitor carries with him from this region of whispering pines and snow indelible impressions. The university throws open its dormitories and fraternity houses to guests, mainly attractive young women and their chaperones, who arrive from all points of the compass on a Thursday night. Alumni come back as for Commencement, with a fair representation of those interested in winter sports from the country round. The meet starts on Friday with preliminary ski and snow-shoe dashes on the Occum Pond; cross-country ski and snow-shoe events, beginning and ending in the Vale of Tempe; obstacle snow-shoe races and a hockey match on the Alumni Oval against a Canadian University team. In the evening the Dramatic Club gives its annual play. On Saturday the ski-joring and intercollegiate relay ski and snow-shoe events are held, and the meet concludes with an intercollegiate ski-jumping contest in which students of American and Canadian seats of learning participate. The carnival closes with the junior prom.

One who has not been at Hanover at this time can have no idea of the genuine enthusiasm which attends these various events. Over the white slopes move several thousand spectators in sleighs, on ski or snow-shoe, or on foot, following the con

testants from point to point and cheering them on. And last February, with the carnival a thing of the past, it was interesting to observe next morning groups of students crossing the spacious campus, on skis, packs on their backs, bound for Sabbath communion with the white outdoor gods. The carnival was merely a phase, not the whole of winter at Han

over.

Williams College is almost ideally situated for the enjoyment of winter sports. Surrounded on all sides by mountains varying in height from 2,500 feet to 3,500 feet, this Berkshire community offers countless opportunities for ski and snowshoe trips of almost any length. On the south is Greylock, with an altitude of 3,505 feet, the highest point in the State. From this elevation a superb view is afforded, embracing the Berkshires, Taconics, Green Mountains, and the Catskills, and on clear days even the Adirondacks and the White Mountains. Eastwardly is Hoosic Mountain, which the famous Mohawk Trail straddles. The long range of the Taconics, culminating in Berlin Mountain, 2,804 feet high, along which runs the New York-Massachusetts State

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line, shuts in the valley on the west. On the north is the Dome, 2,784 feet above sea-level, the imposing southerly outpost of the Green Mountains. Near here starts the Long Trail of the Green Mountain Club, which stretches 250 miles to the Canadian border. All these summits are within eight miles of the town. Shorter hills, ideal for skiing, are numerous near by, and even on the campus.

Despite all these natural advantages, skis, until four years ago, were a curiosity seen once or twice a winter on the campus, and snow-shoes were hardly more common. In the last few years, however, winter sports have come to occupy a large place in college life and interest in them is still growing. Every afternoon parties of enthusiasts may be seen going out or returning from trips. Some are freshmen, bent on getting over their awkwardness on some hill shielded from the public gaze, others upper classmen whose packsacks and blankets speak of longer expeditions.

The Outing Club, to whose efforts these changed conditions are due, was founded in the spring of 1915, with the general purpose of fostering the non-athletic out

door life of the college. The first officers were Samuel C. McKown, president; Russel M. Geer, vice-president; Roland Palmedo, secretary, and Roger W. Riis, treasurer. The club met with instantaneous success as it filled a much-needed place among undergraduate activities.

The first definite event of the club took form in the "First Annual Winter Carnival of Williams College." The events were very well contested, although many of the students who were just learning the arts of skiing and snow-shoeing did not enter, thinking themselves too green. The races included 100-yard and mile events for skiers and snow-shoers and a ski-jumping contest. Most of the participators in the latter event were decidedly new at the game, and tradition recalls merry memories of their tumbles and grotesque gyrations. A jump of very modest size was used for this first contest and is still being used by beginners.

Last year's winter carnival was a much more pretentious affair. The list of entrants was almost three times as large as that of the previous winter, and a distinct advance was evident in skill of the contestants. Open and novice short and long distance races for both skiers and snow-shoers were conducted, and all were closely contested. The new ski-jump, which had been built during the fall, could not be used on account of unfavorable weather conditions. The features of the carnival were perhaps the ski-joring races, in which men on skis drive thoroughbred trotters. Three heats were held on the Main Street of the town, and the best time for the 300 yards was 43 seconds from a standing start.

During the winter trips to the neighboring heights, Greylock, Berlin Mountain, and the Dome, are the rule on Saturday afternoons. Greylock is the favorite objective and is visited by scores of students during the winter months. On week-day afternoons the ski-jump, the nearer slopes, and the more accessible heights are popular.

The club entered the present winter season with high hopes and good pros

pects of getting the majority of the college to spend their recreation hours in the great outdoors instead of in rooms stuffy with tobacco smoke. It will co-operate with the Dartmouth Outing Club in running a combined trip up Mt. Washington, and a four-man ski-relay team will be sent to the winter carnival at Hanover this year.

Canadian colleges and universities were our predecessors in the realm of winter sports by a great many years. As a matter of fact, this was due probably as much to choice as necessity, since the long, hard winters forced outdoor play under any and all conditions. Then, too, the boys of the Dominion come to college adept in the use both of ski and of snow-shoe. It is the testimony of physical directors at Toronto, Ottawa, McGill, Queens, Ridley, McMaster, Trinity, and other seats of learning in Canada, as well as the four Provincial universities-Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and British Columbia-that winter sports have a directly beneficial effect upon physical efficiency, and that the good results of a winter in the open endure throughout the twelve months. McGill has its ski and snow-shoe club, and annually sends a team to the winter carnival at Hanover as well as to events in Canada. Those who have seen students at their winter sports at the University of British Columbia paint enthusiastic pictures of that wonderful region of Point Grey, near Vancouver, where the snow-covered mountains, the blue, icy gulf, and the wonderful valleys are not transcended by anything in Switzerland.

New Hampshire State reports an extraordinary advance in snow-shoeing and skiing. Intramural hockey and tobogganing have long characterized the long winters at Durham. There is a Snow Club at the university devoted to the development of winter meets, and while entrance of members in the various winter meets of the north has been individual, it is expected that within another year they will be sent forth under organized sanction.

HE blacksmith-shop sat huddled by the roadside at the mouth of Wolf Run a hut of blackened boards. The rooftree sagged from each gable down to the crazy chimney in the centre, and the smoke curled up between the clapboard shingles or, as the wind listed, out through the cracks of any wall. It was a bird-singing, light-flashing morning in spring, and Lum Chapman did things that would have set all Happy Valley to wondering. A bareheaded, yellow-haired girl rode down Wolf Run on an old nag. She was perched on a sack of corn, and she gave Lum a shy "how-dye" when she saw him through the wide door. Lum's great forearm eased, the bellows flattened with a long, slow wheeze, and he went to the door and looked after her. Professionally he noted that one hind shoe of the old nag was loose and that the other was gone. Then he went back to his work. It would not be a busy day with Uncle Jerry at the mill-there would not be more than one or two ahead of her and her meal would soon be ground. Several times he quit work to go to the door and look down the road, and finally he saw her coming. Again she gave him a shy "how-dye," and his eyes followed her up Wolf Run until she was out of sight.

The miracle these simple acts would have been to others was none to him. He was hardly self-conscious, much less analytical, and he went back to his work again.

A little way up that creek Lum himself lived in a log cabin, and he lived alone. This in itself was as rare as a miracle in the hills, and the reason, while clear, was still a mystery: Lum had never been known to look twice at the same woman. He was big, kind, taciturn, ox-eyed, calm. He was so good-natured that anybody could banter him, but nobody ever carried it too far, except a bully from an adjoining county one court day. Lum

picked him up bodily and dashed him to the ground so that blood gushed from his nose and he lay there bewildered, white, and still. Lum rarely went to church, and he never talked religion, politics, or neighborhood gossip. He was really thought to be quite stupid, in spite of the fact that he could make lightning calculations about crops, hogs, and cattle in his head. However, one man knew better, but he was a "furriner," a geologist, a "rockpecker" from the Bluegrass. To him Lum betrayed an uncanny eye in discovering coal signs and tracing them to their hidden beds, and wide and valuable knowledge of the same. Once the foreigner lost his barometer just when he was trying to locate a coal vein on the side of the mountain opposite. Two days later Lum pointed to a ravine across the valley.

"You'll find that coal not fer from the bottom o' that big poplar over thar." The geologist stared, but he went across and found the coal and came back mystified.

"How'd you do it?"

Lum led him up Wolf Run. Where the vein showed by the creek-side Lum had built a little dam, and when the water ran even with the mud-covered stones he had turned the stream aside. The geologist lay down, sighted across the surface of the water, and his eye caught the base of the big poplar.

"Hit's the Lord's own level," said Lum, and back he went to his work, the man looking after him and muttering:

"The Lord's own level."

Hardly knowing it, Lum waited for grinding day. There was the same exchange of "how-dyes" between him and the girl, going and coming, and Lum noted that the remaining hind shoe was gone from the old nag and that one of the front ones was going. This too was gone the next time she passed, and for the first time Lum spoke:

"Yo' hoss needs shoein'."