Excerpted from the 1899 Hi-O-Hi

How They Did It.

Oh weren’t they just too perfectly lovely for anything! Our boys, I mean. I think they were regular heroes to stay up all night like that and work so hard down in that nasty hole. I asked Professor Jewett if there was ever another such a class of boys as ours. He said no, and there likely wouldn’t be. I wonder what made him look so funny when he said it. The mean thing! But then he couldn’t have meant that, I know he couldn’t. And it was down so deep in the mud, too, and they had to dig so hard to get it up. Oh, dear! How I wish I could have been there. But I’m only a girl, you know, and couldn’t. All the girls wished they could have been there. One of them kept her head out of the window nearly half the night, listening while the boys were digging. She said that she stopped wishing that she had a man long enough to wish she were a man. But she must have wanted to go awfully, though. But there! I haven’t told a bit about how they did it. Now I’m going to begin right from the beginning and tell all about it.

Well, in the first place, one or two of the representative men of the class started it-Mr. Norris, I guess it was. You see, he heard Professor Wright say that the College needed some more rocks quite badly, and so he thought of this lovely scheme. The boys all thought it would be perfectly elegant. You see, they knew that we had to do something to distinguish ourselves, and that pretty quick. So they began to hunt for a rock good enough for us. They found this one down by Plum Creek, and thought it was just right. Everybody says that ’92 looked at the rock and thought it wasn’t good enough for them, and all the other classes didn’t even condescend to look at it. Aren’t they horrid to say such things? But it can’t be so.

Of course it wouldn’t do to dig it up in the daytime, because they didn’t want entertainment, and so they had to make arrangements to do it at night The boys didn’t like to do that, especially Stoughton, for fear they would get failures, and so they went around and asked Professor Jewett if they might stay up late that night, and he said they might.

Now, you see, all this time while they were talking it over the boys hadn’t told us girls a word about it for fear we would tell, and I suppose we would have, too. We had a class meeting after chapel on the night when they were going to dig it out, and then they told us all about it. The boys weren’t quite sure yet whether it was a good thing to do, and so they asked Miss French. She said yes, that they did such things at New York, and so we went on. After all the arrangements had been made the class was going to adjourn, but Miss Goodwin jumped up and said she wanted us girls to stay a few minutes, because she had something to propose. When all the boys had gone she said that, in view of the fact that most of the girls were yet unprovided, it would be a good chance to show what good cooks we were by giving the boys something to eat while they were working. All the girls thought it was just a perfectly lovely idea. Miss Fairfield jumped right up and said that she heartily approved. It said in Proverbs that the quickest way to a man’s heart was through his stomach, and she knew it was, anyway. She said that on such a momentous occasion we couldn’t afford to make a mistake by not having good things to eat, and so we had better get it at Preston & Hobbs’ and say that we cooked it ourselves. The girls were all so pleased with that idea that they all ran and hugged and kissed her for about five minutes. My! I just wish I were as smart as she is. We ordered the coffee and sandwiches at the bakery, and so everything was ready.

The boys all met about half-past ten at the library, and then went down to dig. Oh no, only half the class went, because Frank Whitney wouldn’t go at all. He said she wouldn’t let him go. I hope mine will be as devoted as that. But Griswold was there, and he made up most of the rest of the class. I heard him say so once. Well, they went down and began digging. They were divided into three divisions, with Mr. Keyes as timekeeper. Each division worked a certain time, and then rested while the others were working. I’m perfectly sure that no other class would have thought of such a scheme as that. We told everybody so the next day, but in a modest way. The only trouble they had in the night’s digging was that they didn’t have enough to eat. You see, Mr. Holt sneaked around to the place where the eatables were before the rest began to eat, and ate about half of them up before the boys saw him at it and pulled him off. They were mad at him, and it was mean, too; but I suppose he was hungry. They say he has such a good appetite.

The digging was awfully hard work, but they didn’t get tired a bit. You see they didn’t make Mr. Cross work at all. He stood at one side and made up poetry to inspire them on. He told me about five hundred verses that he said, but I can only remember two. It was all just as good as this, though. The verses were:

“From thy clayey bed, oh stone,
From thy long-continued home,
Where the bug and earthworm roam,
We’re about to pull you out,
And you’ll find we are quite stout.

“To our rudeness pay no heed,
For of you we have great need:
Follow us where we may lead.
From your ancient bed you sever
To be our monument forever.”

The people that were digging said that after they heard that they weren’t tired at all and could dig twice as long.

Well, by morning they had the stone dug out and pulled from the hole. It was a noble piece of work, and I’m just perfectly sure that there isn’t another lot of men anywhere that could have done it so quickly as our ’98 boys did. They will tell you so any time you ask them. I know it was a great deal bigger work than those Egyptian pyramids that the foot-ball team learns about in the archaeology class. We aren’t a bit conceited about it, either.

Dear me! how can I tell you about the excitement the next day? How they did work and tug and haul the stone up to the campus, and finally put it in place in triumph. How tired and excited and happy and proud we all were! It was just sumptuous.

We got one awfully good joke on the other classes. For about a week a lot of our boys would go out every night and get a little homely rock and paint ’99 or 1900 or 1901 on it, and then put it down beside ours for a comparison. How little and cheap it did make the other classes feel to see them! They were mad, too. It was a killing joke. We all just laughed and laughed and laughed about it.

Well, I guess I’ve told most all about our stone that I can. Mr. Warner is going to give a speech on it at commencement time. He let me see the speech, and it is a perfect beauty. He tells all about how we happened to think about it, and how we came to do it, and how we did do it, and how it seemed when we were digging it out, and how proud we are of it. It is a long speech and as thrilling as it can be all the time. The he talks to the stone just as if it were alive. He says, “And thou, oh great and mighty monster of the earth, from out whose dirty depths we did dig thee: thou, oh rock, art to be forever our representative and token, our guide and harbinger, our talisman that always maketh us look back to the fond days when our Alma Mater had our society” – and a whole lot more just as nice as that, every bit. It’s splendid, but I can’t remember the rest.

Well, this tells about how they did it, but oh how much lovelier it all was than I’ve told it! Every time I think about it I’m as proud and happy as can be. There won’t be anything like it ever happen again: just you see.

This was taken from the 1899 Hi-O-Hi class yearbook, pages 206-08, found at the Oberlin College Archives, Oberlin, Ohio. There is no author listed for this article in the yearbook.