"From the Treasurer's Statement we learn . . ." read the first words to emerge from The Magenta under that bravest of all battle flags, the one that reads Vol. 1. Issue 1. Early readers who had just descended from their mustache cups to their poached eggs that January morning in '73 learned in the next eleven lines of clipped prose that the Kirkland Fellowship fund had reached the level of $6,300.

The Treasurer's Statement referred to was the one of the year 1872 and was published over the signature of Nath. Silsbee, Yankee-visaged son of a Salem merchant, Treasurer pro tem of the College, and a dabbler in politics. To be completely accurate, the reported principal in Mr. Silsbee's admirable Statement was not $6,300, but $6,313.

In the next year the Hon. George Bancroft, donor of the fellowship, who was otherwise famed both as the man who ordered the invasion of Mexico and as a historian of some note, completed his donation to bring the sum of the fund to more than $10,000.

It was not even a year afterwards that one Allan Walton Gould, a man "always somewhat inclined to books," reaped the first rewards of Bancroft's generosity. Gould studied for a year in Leipzig under the fellowship and returned to become a tutor at Harvard and finally a Unitarian Minister. His class's 30th anniversary book was somewhat scandalized by the report that he had once held a post in a church "reputed to be radical."

The second grant went to a boarded, esthetic-appearing Neapolitan, George Bendelari, "or, as he was known in the College, Georgie Anacleto Corrado Bendclari '74." Mr. Bendclari wound up writing for the New York Sun, which has not to anyone's knowledge ever been "reputed to be radical."

The years have been as kind to the fellowship as they were to the instrument of its early publicity. At the moment, the fellowship is held by two graduate students, Stainslaw Wellisz and Harold Ferdinand Van Ummerson. The principal has new mounted to $16,137.08 according to the latest Treasurer's Statement, published over the signature of William H. Clatlin. Mrs Clatlin dabbles in archaeology.