Copey Celebrates 82nd Birthday; Reflects on War

Yesterday, on the eve of his eighty-second birthday, Charles Townsend Copeland '82, Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory, emeritus, spoke solemnly of the war and its consequences on student life. "I wish it were over," mused Copey.

"Young men who leave college in almost every case do not come back after the war. You can imagine how it would look to them after the reality they have been through. I should not want any soldier for a pupil. We might not agree," Copey commented with a thin smile.

In his Concord Avenue study, he sat decked out in a blue velvet vest and jacket, a wilted dandelion in his button-hole. He had just returned fro, his daily walk "around and around the Common." Today he expects to spend quietly at his home and looked forward to giving another of his famed readings in the Union this spring.

"It will hurt the young men very much," he added of the three-year college program. "If it deprives them of half their education, how can it help but hurt them." Surprised to hear that the accelerated course might be continued after the war, he stated flatly, "I am not friend of that of all."