Junior Smoker. First of Series of Smokers held Monday Night at the I. K. A. Trinity Tripod, February 20, 1914

Junior Smoker. First of Series of Smokers held Monday Night at the I. K. A. Trinity Tripod, February 20, 1914

Description of common social event - the "smoker" - during which students and faculty gathered for a lecture or academic discussion and, of course, smoked. Read the entire issue online in the Digital Repository.

Trinity College

Trinity Tripod, February 20, 1914, page 1

1914-02-20

newspaper

JUNIOR SMOKER.

First of Series of Smokers held Monday Night at the I. K. A.

The semi-impossible was accomplished in our very midst Monday night, at the I. K. A. house, when goad-fellow-· ship, expurgated punch, and Fatimas (no advertisement) buried the hatchet and amicably joined forces with the Latin literature, as entertainingly expounded by Professor Leroy C. Barrett; in making enjoyable the occasion of the first of the smokers of the class of 1915.

In pursuance of the plan inaugurated last year by the present seniors, the junior class has begun its series of smokers, to be held every two weeks at the several fraternity houses in turn. H. L. Brainard is chairman of the committee in charge.

The speaker of the occasion was Professor Barrett, who chose as his subject the preservation of the J-atin literature from the time of its creation up to the invention of printing. The productive period, said Professor Barrett, ended about the year 100 A. D. The literature then produced had been written on papyrus,-parchment, and vellum. During the time of the decline of-the classic literature, and prior to the Germanic invasions, the works of older writers were Stuwed. in the schools, libraries were founded, and annotated copies of the classic authors were made for school use. Not all of the works of an author were copied, for this purpose. Thus out of 140 books of Livy's history, only 35 have come down to us.

During the period of anarchy and disorder which characterized the dark ages, the classic literature disappeared. Latin, as a spoken language, was nearly extinct by the time of Charlemagne, and illiteracy was common. The main thing that saved the literature during- this time was the practice in the monasteries of copying manuscripts merely for the sake of employment. Freqently the monks took old manuscripts, scratched out the writing, and wrote thereon works of their own composition; these pieces of parchment, seemingly valueless, when treated with chemicals, reveal the wealth of literature which some unappreciative monk had condemned.

With the revival of learning in the fourteenth century the thirst for Latin literature created such a frenzy that scholars scoured the monasteries and other out of the way sources and thus discovered a great quantity of valuable manuscript.

In concluding his talk, Professor Barrett told of the efforts of the modern scholar, Tischendorf who, early in the nineteenth century found, in a waste basket of a monastery on Mt. Sinai, parts of an early Greek manuscript of the Bible. He returned to the monastery in 1856, in the hope of recovering more manuscript, but was informed that there was no more. Believing that he was being deceived, he returned again three years later and discovered a priceless Greek Bible, which is now in the possession of the Russian Government.