A quaint little story which has drifted up from Washington lately goes like this: At a recent Harvard Club dinner etc. there the first speaker was Tariff Commissioner Robert Lincoln O'Brien '91. Naturally enough the genial commissioner for lack of something better to say, perhaps, made a point of his great age and generally what an old bird he really was. The next speaker, a member of the class of '21, opened his remarks by saying that compared to Mr. O'Brien he was a more fledgling, etc. etc. Following this, our own James Roosevelt '30 got up to make his contribution to the gathering: "If the gentleman from the Class of 1921 considers himself to be a fiedgling, what must I be?" Whereupon came loud and spontaneous cries from the back of the room," An egg."
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Another incident to add to the Lowell tradition la told of the President Emeritus in connection, with his deafness. After the service at a certain church he went up to the minister and apologized for not being able to come oftener but that he didn't hear very well. Whereupon the minister suggested that he sit in a pew in which an acousticon had been installed, "Oh, no, no," President Lowell replied, "it's nothing physical, It's nothing physical."
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We've always admired those painters who scale the precipitous Lowell House tower. But they don't really mind the job. It's romantic. Or at least there must be some attraction in the work because we caught one cheerful fellow, dangling from a rope some hundred feet above sea level, whistling away gaily. What was he whistling? You've guessed it. "The Man on the Flying Trapeze."
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