Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/537



"In the chronicle of our 'firsts', for there is a 'first' in all things, the earliest Varsity song has its own chapter. The harp had hung unstrung on Oregon's walls for full a score of years before a skald of sufficient gifts decried it and awoke it, and how we thrilled to its melody. . ..

"Dr. Frank Strong, our third president, had been largely con- cerned in music as an avocation while at Yale. He had partially made his way through college and in the graduate school by the aid of fees earned in music, . ..

"We were advertised as the Faculty Male Quartet—E. D. Ressler, 1st tenor; F. S. Dunn, 2nd tenor; I. M. Glen, 1st bass; President Strong, 2nd bass. . . . And how we could and did sing! Once, when Dr. Strong had completed the most trying task of revising the cata- logue, having spent days and nights with his committee, he rented a cab for several hours in the afternoon, and we four drove about town, aimlessly, indifferently—just singing, singing everything we knew and practicing new pieces—in sheer jubilee and pure joy of singing. . ..

"And then, one evening in the upper rooms of Collier Hall, where President and Mrs. Strong were entertaining in reception, we four, as a surprise, sang for the first time the first Varsity song, "Oh, Oregon." It was in manuscript form and I at the least never knew from the lips of either the composer or the poet the authorship of song or poem, though I bantered both to acknowledge and their evasion were as good as confessions. "But the next issue of the Oregon Monthly contained the poem under the name of Irving M. Glen, while there was issued shortly afterward a manual of College Songs, the first to be published since the old worn-out Harvard compilation. . . . for many years there- after, the glee clubs sang it, though never to my liking, for they mitted it in gulps, as it were, racing to a comma, then, after a pause, scrambling for more yardage. "And then it died. We never hear it now. After all, it was just ephemeral. Its words were trivial. It lacked that indefinable, death- less something to rank it with the great odes of the greater uni- versities."

Oh, Oregon, Oh, Oregon Sometimes called "There's a Pretty Little Village" By Professor Irving M. Glen There's a pretty little village In a valley