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"Time would fail me." (Hebrews 11:32)
A. 1923, "The College Boys and Girls."
The Arabian Doctor" first came to Camp in 1923, (Paul Harrison, whom I had known at Hopkins and at Brown Memorial
from 1906 to 1908). At once he was part of it. On the first Sunday afternoon walk he gave his memorable and immemorial
Mezzuin call, "Allah, Allah, Allah, Il Allah". (For a moment Patty and I feared the popularity of this
spectacular form of missionary propaganda from Knapp's Hill might jeopardize the quieter vogue of "Fishin'
Jimmy"--and went and took our seats by Father Speer. But they were entirely compatible, and Bahrein discoursed
with Englewood,--as recently with Washington, Pa.). The first Mrs. Harrison was "Rena" (Regina) Rahbe,
a Union Protestant Infirmary nurse, beloved by us as a Baltimorean and for herself. At that time they had with
them Paul Wilberforce Junior, an independent person of three who ran counter to public opinion by his valiant and
repeated "Got no name",--and "Baby Clinton." In later years they accumulated Dorothy and John
Timothy Stone Harrison. (Yes, Reader, you have guessed it,--named for our Baltimore pastor, once removed, to Chicago).
Dr. Harrison is inseparably connected with the summer "when we had so many young people",--college boys
and girls. We all discussed colleges and education, large colleges and small ones, "evolution and dancing"
by the hour, on vacant porches and at Polly's Place, (the tea room in Colebrook where Jim Hutchison observed, "I
am not accustomed to sitting on scrap baskets." The reader
will recall the wicker chairs at Polly's Place).
Mr. Coleman had his picture taken with the missionaries, the Taylors, the Dreyers, the Harrisons,
and "the German Sisters" (dear Friedenshort deaconesses, Schwesterin Johanna Rabe and Margarethe Wetzel).
Mrs. Coleman had her picture taken with the girls and boys; Edith Robertson and Nancy McCreary, called "McPherson"--(Smith);
Sarah Austin, (Vassar); Edith Dreyer, (later R. N.); Henry Kumm, (Haverford College and Hopkins Medical, since
on the Rockefeller Foundation around the globe); Karl Kumm, (Haverford College and General Theological Seminary);
Nat Austen, (Dartmouth and the First World War); Rhea Ewing, (Princeton and then Lahore); Fred ("Chesh")
Dreyer,--Chefoo and Chesire, England, and Toronto University Medical ). Later: Patty Speer and Kay Hazelton, (Shipley
School, and Patty later Bryn Mawr); Bob Wright, (Persia and Princeton).
Later "Hutch and Jim" came by hitch-hike, (i. e., Ralph C. Hutchison, Sterling, Lafayette, U. S. Aviation
Corps, Harvard Graduate School, Princeton Seminary, and Pennsylvania Graduate School,--possibly we have omitted
one or two colleges on the way to Alborz at Teheran, and back to W. & J.; I refrain from enumerating all degrees
and titles; and Dr. James E. Hutchison, Lafayette, Barnes and University of Kansas Medical,--one of the best of
doctors, however, even before he began); a too short visit from Elliott and Holly, (Princeton, Edinburgh and Vassar).
At the end of the season, Marnie Speer, (Bryn Mawr and now Yenching). We flocked to meet her by foot-race and car.
Almost the car did not get started. Dr. Taylor brought Mrs. Speer soup, to encourage her as she sat waiting on
the lowly boardwalk-eventually our picnic reassembled under a clothes-line of washing at the Beecher Falls Station--and
Marnie rolled in from Edinburgh. (See pictures of heads and feet at station platform).
It was the summer when the game "Adverbs" came into its own,--Karl interpreting "lovingly"
as "cordially." Also the occupation "weaving," introduced by Mrs. Dreyer, from the Mayos'.
(See baskets at Camp). Dr. Harrison operated on Fred (with scout knife or derrick--no one knows), --Fred recovered.
We had Field Sports. Everyone joined in. Everyone obliged. The German Sisters obliged by joining the cracker-eating
contest. Mr. Reist obliged by having his picture taken while falling down in a race with Dr. Brister and Mr. Dreyer.
It was "the Committee." Nancy helped to put Catherine to bed (too early); Rhea brushed Hig's teeth (too
early); Nat pushed John over the crib's brink (too early)--it was "the Committee."
It is a privilege now to think of the Committee, and others, working throughout the world. The stations flash by--Africa,
Bristol, Lahore, Bangkok, Peking, Bowdoin, Shippensburg, Denver, Teheran, Chefoo, and all the rest. Wherever each
one is,--a little spot, as Rupert Brooke would say,--that is forever Diamond. (The missionaries didn't do too badly
either! The German Sisters still hold the fort in western China amidst brigands and all the powers of the world.
Dr. Harrison has just returned again to Bahrein).
Magna est veritas et prevelabit.
B. 1927, "The Boys' Camp."
Time would fail me to tell how Elliott and I always thought we could make a Boys' Camp at Diamond Pond; how once
my husband tried it; (neither the C. I. M. nor the Presbyterian Board wanting to manage that resort, and no purchaser
arising from Country Life to buy it); how Mr. Brown, the manager, did not come; how the Workmans and the Reverend
Lee Klaer and his medical brother Harvey got one boy (a nice boy, Dick English); how nobody liked the cooking,
and the lawn-mower got rusty, and Fisherman's Lodge went unswept; how a girl called "Mac" from Stoneybrook
wanted "a. trip a day"; how Vera came, and Hannah Hunsicker, Sue Deacon and Patty Speer and Mary Williams.
How all of us went "dowelling," how we listened to "My Task," and to a sermon
about Esther, and to stories of the Marines ;--and sang about the "Halls of Montezuma" ;' how Kit Byrd
liked the Lake--(and later married a minister); how Rudie broke in the Chevy and "put the first five hundred
miles on her" and taught Kit and Hig to drive; how he looked upon the Camp scene and said,--"The admiral
carries all the load." (Meaning my husband,--and how true.)
At all events we didn't get a Boys' Camp out of it-though we had a remarkable season; (remarkable perhaps chiefly
for patience on the part of all, and especially of the so-called admiral).
But we got the unending friendship of Henry O'Sullivan Black Treadwell Rudolf, and in 1934 of Lou his bride, (and
many crows were shot---or escaped). And is that not enough result from one so short a season? A career that we
have all followed like a novel of adventure,--from nightshifts in the blast-furnace beside the Ohio, to Chicago,
London, Wales and Turkey, in a world at war :--a friend who spent every vacation with us, "like our own,"--from
that day until he sailed across the world, who wrote us systematically and never failed to cable; until now at
last the extracurricular name of Rudie is used as a text for his sermon on industry, by Dr. R. C. Hutchison (the
other Lieutenant). "Stranger than fietion"--
Since the Chevy first rolled down the hill, we all seem to have traveled "a great many thousand miles,"
as they say in "this man's navy." There are no more loyal children of Camp Diamond. Two who have appeared
in this story have been somewhat like daughters-in-law to me. I refer of course to Harriet Hutchison and Louella
Rudolf. Lou and Rudie came to me last in the September of '36, and stepped into Balsam Lodge on the day the Hutchisons
left it. That Fall the Rudies started on their long road across the world, and we have not seen them since. I often
think, of them,
--and the others: "They will all come home at last."
C. 1935, The ripples near the edge of the Pond. The fleet is out.
1935 seems a special summer, looking back on it, though at the time we could not foresee that a new pattern was
emerging. The group was I think the smallest we ever had. Some of the Ristines came to Stony Point. The Corums
and the Hutchisons were fully established as regular Campers. The Rudies came to the Ch&let at the end of the
season, their second visit together, their wedding trip having been made in 1934; Bob Glover was also welcomed
at the Chalet.
We have excellent pictures of Dr. and Mrs. Taylor taken that summer, standing at the corner of their uplifted porch
at Woodcroft. Some of their decorations are still on the walls inside today, notably "Caught Up" in the
writingroom which was added to that cabin for Mrs. Taylor. The front sitting-room with fireplace recalls many happy
English tea-parties across the years, including one which Mrs. Taylor gave in my stead, for delightful Mrs. Hand
and Dr. Hand, the Bristers' clergyman from Boston. It recalls Henry and Karl Kumm, of course, and the later coming
of Dr. Howard Guinness and of charming Paul Guinness, and of the ]ady preacher from Stewartstown; the daily prayer
meetings of the little groups from the C. I. M.; the Bible lessons with Hig and Victor Roberts, Junior; or with
John and "Buck" (Walter) Swartz, (who is now with the Canadian Navy, in the Great War, 1941). It recalls
a place where anyone could go in trouble, a sort of footstool, or kneeling bench, or stepping stone to Heavenly
Places. Unquestionably the Taylors made "a pattern," and with 1935 the time has come to speak of them
once more.
People have sometimes asked me "if the Taylors would have liked Mr. Coleman so much if he had not become interested
in their work?" The answer is always the same: Yes. The Taylors being themselves and my husband being himself,
they would have liked and loved him (and he them)'under any and all circumstances. In a world where we cannot be
sure of everything,--we can be sure of the Taylors. But as it came about that he did become interested in their
work, (and they in his), the association grew and became a sacrament. Their life is one continual prayer and their
prayers have been instrumental in making Camp Diamond what it became. We can never thank them enough.
In regard to my husband, he has been described as an "entrepreneur." Certainly at Camp he was the originator.
No one walked farther, or cast a fly better, or carried more packs, or prayed more, ("in secret," as
our Lord taught us to do), than he. Everything that happened at Camp, and became an institution, was in some way
instigated by him; (even, shall we say? the Taylors' prayers, because he chose the Taylors). I do not think that
anyone can ever count the ripples to the world's end from Little Diamond Pond, started by the one whom Rudie named
"the admiral."
We have also from 1935 an excellent snapshot of my husband standing in the door of Ferncote, "wearing his
brown suit,"-- (of that date, not just the same one as in 1908 but very like it), with daily nasturtium from
the Chalet in the buttonhole. It is one of the best pictures that we have of him; he walks forward---quizzical
and welcoming.
There is another snapshot, exceptionally characteristic, of my husband with the actual Admiral, Dr. Brister, two
old friends of some forty-five years' standing, probably talking about geography or the weather,--"on Sunday
after Church." The scene has that special glow by which, as Mrs. Speer used to say, parodying the old description
of London, that "an inhabitant from Mars dropped down in Camp Diamond on Sunday would know at first glance
that it was Sunday." The very Camp Street has a special shine and one connects even the outward manifestation
of climate with that day, the peerless white and matchless blue of clouds and sky, the exceptional green of the
trees, the peculiar purple of the hills,--the uplifting air,--what my husband called "real Camp Diamond weather."
There they stand, at the crossing between the office and the diningroom, "on Sunday after Church," pictured
in mid-August 1935,--as in so many previous Augusts,--the two old friends who, when one more August had rounded
out its span, would be no longer with us there.