University Social Honors Professor Lee and Retiring Professor Bradley
A celebratory gathering at the university president's home marks the return of a faculty member and the departure of another to his farm.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Friday morning President Powell of the University extended to the students and faculty an invitation to be present at his residence on the evening of the 22nd. Professor O. P. Lee had just returned from the East, where he has been receiving additional training in oratory. When Professor Lee resumes his chair of Literature, Professor J. K. Bradley will retire, stating that his intention is to repair to his farm on the Nooksack and henceforth to apply his idle moments in communing with the Dryads and in following the occupations of Nimrod and Cincinnatus. Thus it was a fitting time for the assembling of the young folks in a happy, social bond. About sixty guests joined in their efforts of song and pleasantries to make the occasion one of lasting memory. A party of the young men chose a spokesman, who at a fitting moment extended a welcome to Prof. Lee and at the same time presented Prof. Bradley with a gold pen and pencil as a small token of their regard and esteem. Refreshments were served, and before the hour of midnight the guests departed, each one feeling that it is pleasant to welcome a friend, and that the departure of a friend may sometimes be made at least an occasion of pleasant remembrance.
“Professor J. K. Bradley will retire, and states that his intention is to repair to his farm on the Nooksack and henceforth to apply his idle moments in communing with the Dryads.”
This social scene at the University of Washington (then a small institution in downtown Seattle) captures the transition from a formal, classically-educated faculty to the growing local community. The Nooksack Valley, where Prof. Bradley retired to farm, was then a frontier of settler expansion, a common path for early academics who traded ivory towers for land claims.
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