Fatince Out

Faunce Out

Next June, with slow and stately steps, two men, clad in academic robes slashed with purple, scarlet, white, will lead a colorful procession down Providence's College Street.

In the Old Baptist Meeting House, midway down the Hill, they will doff mortar boards and one of the men will relinquish the truncheon of his authority. The other will catch it up. And so will pass a famed figure in U. S. educational circles -- Doctor William Herbert Perry Faunce, president of Brown University.

To Brown alumni & undergraduates came news last week that Parson Faunce, reaching the retirement age of threescore years and ten and unrecovered from a sickness of three years ago, would be succeeded by another parson -- Doctor Clarence Augustus Barbour. Parson Barbour, staunch Baptist, prominent Rochester divine, President of Rochester Theological Seminary, will assume administrative duties in June.

Parson Faunce (the name rhymes with Harvardized "chawnce") is short, dignified and deep voiced. He faintly resembles Cartoonist Bairnsfather's "Old Bill." He has poise, personality, pudginess. He invariably wears wing collars, four-in-hand cravats. Cigars have never yellowed his teeth; spirits have never tainted his breath. He is precise in conduct, a precisionist in speech.

For 30 years, six mornings a week during the college year William Herbert Perry Faunce has stood before his young gentlemen in chapel and told a story, pointed a moral. Attentive listeners, year by year, could detect no repetition, could spot no bromides, in the smooth flow of oratory.

Confession, counsel, poured forth. One time Parson Faunce confessed that, as a sophomore lad, his roommate had told him a bawdy story. It so poisoned his mind that (even after years of speckless living) its smutty ghost soared before him. Students were interested, and speculated on the story. No one asked President Faunce to tell it.

Phi Beta Kappa Faunce has aversions, hobbies.

His aversions are: Immoral students who study the conquest of Providence flappers more closely than the conquests of Macedonian Alexander; football rally stickers pasted on certain parts of Brown's ill-proportioned equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius; intoxicating liquors, which Parson Faunce refuses to believe his young gentlemen drink; sexy modern novels, instanced by the case of English Instructor Percy ("Plastic Age") Marks who was asked to resign when his college novel reached Parson Faunce's sedate office. Percy Marks complied.

Parson Faunce's hobbies are: Chinese students, of whom Brown's campus has a plethora; football, of which he knows nothing, but loyally supports; freshman teas, where gangling first year men stand awkward, watching Mrs. W. H. P. F. pour Chinese tea with deft, graceful hands; money-raising, of which he is past master, successful with everybody but Brown Graduate John Davison Rockefeller Jr., who has given Brown but one small building and but half of that. Tycoon Rockefeller would not give the money except with the proviso that the edifice bear his name. So Rockefeller Hall, undergraduate meeting place, today stands on the campus. In other quarters, Parson Faunce has been more successful. Under his aegis, Brown buildings have increased an hundredfold, Brown endowments a thousandfold.

In his undergraduate days, Parson Faunce was undistinguished. No gridiron hero he, no baseball, track, basketball contender. But he sang bass in the Glee Club. And as his share of athletic glory, he rubbed the tired biceps of his famed roommate, Southpaw Pitcher Richmond.

His room, Hope College 12, had two closets, one for clothes, the other for coal. Coal & clothes were sometimes mixed and perhaps, sitting on the chaste Grecian steps of Manning Hall discussing the lectures of loved Latin Professor John L. Lincoln with his classmate & fraternity brother, Charles Evans Hughes, he would absently pluck a bit of black dust from waistcoat pocket. No. 12 Hope College is now inhabited by blackamoors, being in the heart of Brown's Harlem.

Post graduate work brought Parson Faunce an A. M. in 1883, D. D. in 1897, LL.D. from Baylor in 1904. During all this time he held many jobs--but all within cloistered quads or the protecting arms of the Church. He taught mathematics at Brown, led erring sinners back to the Baptist fold in Springfield, Mass., New York, and Harvard. In 1899 he became Presi- dent of Brown & Professor of Moral & Intellectual Philosophy. His classes in Moral & Intellectual Philosophy were small but his Presidency was adequate.

Mathematician, theologian, philosopher, preacher, author, trustee and president, Doctor William Herbert Perry Faunce has glorified his Alma Mater. As he walks down College Street next June he may call to mind his own words, "Human progress is not a delusion."