The People's Press, Old Boys' Reunion Edition, August 7, 1906
Dublin Core
Title
The People's Press, Old Boys' Reunion Edition, August 7, 1906
Subject
Welland and local businesses
Description
A complete scanned copy of The People's Press, Old Boys' Reunion Edition, August 7, 1906.
It features a sketch on the history of Welland up to 1906, and many features on prominent citizens and businesses.
This text on page 3 explains what the Old Boys reunion was about:
"The popular modern Old Boys movement has in it not a little of old-fashioned homely sentiment. Sooner or later the average man turns instinctively to his boyhood’s home. It matters little whether or not he has achieved what the world calls success. The old home calls anyway. He may say it is curiosity to know how the old town managed to get along without him. It may be the busy man’s only excuse for a long-deferred holiday. It may be pride in the prospering little community which first sheltered him. Oftener, perhaps, than any of these, it is an undefined, deep-buried, rough sort of tenderness which calls and calls and will not be denied. Kipling has sung of how the spicy garlic smells never die in the nostrils of the man who has lived in India, and how he can always ‘hear the East a-calling.” Even more we have heard of how the Westerner, whether from mountain or prairie, becomes in time absolutely homesick for the land he knows and loves. But this Old Boy instinct is universal. Oliver Wendell Holmes, the genial and gentle, has sung of it. Riley has put it in Hoosier tongue in “The Ole Swimmin’ Hole.” Probably each man has different memories and different sentiments towards his first home. But the fact remains — he wants to see it again. And he goes — joyfully and with haste. He may be limping with the burden of honors and rheumatism; he may think that his L. L. D. hood would barely suffice to cover his bald head; he would write a huge cheque if only he dare eat again as when he used to raid the pantry. But he goes—by the score and by the hundred — business men talking shop until the sight of the strange and yet familiar old town chokes them into silence; professional men arguing glibly on obscure points of law or obscurer points of divinity, until they recall the effectual argument of a birch rod in the woodshed, when they had tried to explain absence from school. And there are those who have oft stumbled in the race. Nobody calls them successful or great, but — begone, dull care! They are all veritable Old Boys —and they care for none of those things. The Old Boys associations are now numbered by the score. Nearly every county has one and frequently there are two or more within the county. The general object is the promotion of social feeling and the renewing of old acquaintance. Sometimes it results in a stimulus to trade, sometimes in a donation to some local charity, always it is the best of advertisements to the town whose ex-residents refuse to forget their early home and whose honors reflect glory on their birthplace."
It features a sketch on the history of Welland up to 1906, and many features on prominent citizens and businesses.
This text on page 3 explains what the Old Boys reunion was about:
"The popular modern Old Boys movement has in it not a little of old-fashioned homely sentiment. Sooner or later the average man turns instinctively to his boyhood’s home. It matters little whether or not he has achieved what the world calls success. The old home calls anyway. He may say it is curiosity to know how the old town managed to get along without him. It may be the busy man’s only excuse for a long-deferred holiday. It may be pride in the prospering little community which first sheltered him. Oftener, perhaps, than any of these, it is an undefined, deep-buried, rough sort of tenderness which calls and calls and will not be denied. Kipling has sung of how the spicy garlic smells never die in the nostrils of the man who has lived in India, and how he can always ‘hear the East a-calling.” Even more we have heard of how the Westerner, whether from mountain or prairie, becomes in time absolutely homesick for the land he knows and loves. But this Old Boy instinct is universal. Oliver Wendell Holmes, the genial and gentle, has sung of it. Riley has put it in Hoosier tongue in “The Ole Swimmin’ Hole.” Probably each man has different memories and different sentiments towards his first home. But the fact remains — he wants to see it again. And he goes — joyfully and with haste. He may be limping with the burden of honors and rheumatism; he may think that his L. L. D. hood would barely suffice to cover his bald head; he would write a huge cheque if only he dare eat again as when he used to raid the pantry. But he goes—by the score and by the hundred — business men talking shop until the sight of the strange and yet familiar old town chokes them into silence; professional men arguing glibly on obscure points of law or obscurer points of divinity, until they recall the effectual argument of a birch rod in the woodshed, when they had tried to explain absence from school. And there are those who have oft stumbled in the race. Nobody calls them successful or great, but — begone, dull care! They are all veritable Old Boys —and they care for none of those things. The Old Boys associations are now numbered by the score. Nearly every county has one and frequently there are two or more within the county. The general object is the promotion of social feeling and the renewing of old acquaintance. Sometimes it results in a stimulus to trade, sometimes in a donation to some local charity, always it is the best of advertisements to the town whose ex-residents refuse to forget their early home and whose honors reflect glory on their birthplace."
Creator
People's Press
Source
Welland Public Library Newspaper Collection
Date
1906/08/07
Rights
Access to this item is provided for educational and research purposes only. The user assumes responsibility for obtaining permission from the copyright holder to publish or distribute this content.
Format
Newspaper
Language
English
Type
Text
Identifier
Storage – Newspaper Box 1
Coverage
Welland
Files
Collection
Citation
People's Press, “The People's Press, Old Boys' Reunion Edition, August 7, 1906,” Welland Public Library Local History, accessed September 16, 2024, https://omeka.wellandlibrary.ca/items/show/11013.