Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/518

 452 A HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO societies sprang up in bewildering number and variety. There were men's clubs, clubs of both sexes, women's clubs, dramatic clubs, musical clubs, and literary clubs. The great club among the men was the Reynolds, which occupied the Reynolds Club House and which prospered wonderfully, enrolling in 1915-16 more than a thousand members. Nearly or quite two hundred of these various clubs and societies were organized, which among them ministered to every conceivable demand of the student body. One event connected with the organization of the Men's Glee Club requires mention. Organized in the winter of 1893-94, the club had arranged for its first great concert in the Central Music Hall, Chicago, on the evening of March 8, 1894. At the last moment the need of another song was felt, and the leader of the club appealed to Edwin H. Lewis, at the time an Assistant in Rhetoric, to write one for him. Mr. Lewis was about to sit down to dinner. He writes: "So I turned in and wrote them one, and they sang it that night, with all its staring imperfections. I remem- ber going without dinner in order to get the thing off." The song was the "Alma Mater." The original music was designed for male voices and was not adapted for general use. Paul Mandeville of the Class of 1899 writes: During 1898 we attempted several times to sing the "Alma Mater" in chapel. One morning after the women had been straining at the high tenor parts, Dr. Harper put it up to the choir to arrange the music so the co-eds could sing. Mr. Mandeville with some assistance did this, adapting and arran- ging the music for mixed voices. With these changes in the music the "Alma Mater" soon became a great favorite and was sung on all occasions, in chapel, at convocations, after football games, and at meetings of all kinds, and every night, five minutes after 10:00 o'clock, its melody floated out over the quadrangles from the Alice Freeman Palmer chimes in Mitchell Tower. Mr. Lewis, the author, who became an Instructor in the University and later Dean of Lewis Institute, Chicago, speaks of its imperfections, and writes: "The second line of the first stanza is the worst in the English language." The "Alma Mater," however, so commended itself to the University that it fairly won the title of "The