1897.]
base ball nines of the county. In the spring of 1875 the team
representing the College won the series of games and was
awarded the title of ‘ ‘ Champions ’ ’ and given an ornamental bat.
The bat is still in existence and may be seen in the College Trophy
Room. One interesting feature of the games was the fact that
they were pitched by John M. Ward, who afterwards became
prominent in the professional base ball world and who is doubtless
better known as “ Monte ” Ward. The Hon. Ellis L. Orvis, of
Bellefonte, caught the games.
To the lover of the quaint and curious in the book line the Col
lege Library offers attractions. A set of volumes containing the
transactions of The Philosophical Society of the 17th Century
contains many curious observations on Science, Art, Medicine,
etc. A little text book, dated Aout ier, 1792, and inscribed Le
Livre de Mademoiselle Louise Munn, is rather interesting, inas
much as it shows that Mme. Munn of the 18th century was very
much as the American school girl of to-day. The book is scrib
bled full of notes and on the back page there is an artistic repre
sentation of what was presumably meant for the teacher.
All old Dictionnaire de L’ Acaddmie Francoise offers food for
speculation, inasmuch as it bears the date of the Napoleonic era
and the name Alexandre Bertliier, Lieut. This in itself isn’t
much, but when one remembers that one Alexandre Berthier was
Napoleon’s famous Marshal, and that Marshal Berthier at one
time held the rank of Lieutenant of Engineers, it becomes signifi
cant. Did this book once belong to the great Marshal ? If so,
how did it drift from Paris across the Atlantic and into Central
Pennsylvania ?
Perhaps the greatest treasure, however, is an old Latin-
Hebrew Bible. In 1462 John Guttenberg printed the first Bible.
A few years later, as years went then, or in 1534, , of
the City of Basileae, or Basle, aided possibly by his journeymen,
printed this Bible and bound it in the same parchment and peculiar
brass clasps that hold it to-day. The title page bears the name
Gottfried Cernitz in a remarkably clear hand for a medievalist, and
there are Latin marginal notes in the same hand all over the book.
We wonder involuntarily who this Gottfried was ? What manner
of man was he? To judge by his “chiogaphy,” as Narcisse
would say, he was either a member of the Church or one of the
Universities, as learning was confined at that time to members of
these two classes. Doubtless the owner many a time, pored over
Melange.