1916 Volume 41 No 1–5 - Phi Delta Theta Scroll Archive

20 THE SCROLLFOUNDER OF THE ORDER OF HOO HOOBOLLING ARTHUR JOHNSON, Monmouth, '85"A Phi Delt is not without honor save in THE SCROLL"—this isan exaggeration, of course, but in a great many instances the activemembers liave almost permitted such to happen. The successes ofour prominent alumni ancl the efforts they have put forth to achievethose successes ofttimes go unnoticed, and a typical example of thishas caused the writer to attempt, in a small wav, the biography ofa man who deserves a much better biography and a better Boswell.Boiling Arthur Johnson was born in Ohio, about a half centuryago. and while yet quite a lad his parents took him to Illinois. Here,in "nis youthful days, he sold newspapers and magazines, in order toaccumulate the wherewithal to get an education, upon which he hadset his heart. In 1879, he entered Monmouth Academy, Monmouth,111., and almost instantly began to create a sensation among hisfellow students by his activities in reorganizing a sometime defunctliterary society in the acadeiuy, known as the Ciceroneans, and bywriting class essays and monographs, which were so diff'erent anddistinctively individual and original that they caused a sensationand not a little disturbance. .\t this time, he was also correspondentfor that section of Illinois for the New York \firror, the BurlingtonHawkeyc, and other papers. Sometime during his two years in theacademy, or in the early edge of his freshman year in MonmouthCollege, Boiling Arthur was made a Phi. He says:When I was initiated, they drove me around town in a hearse for a whileand then led me out, bound hand and foot, on the top of a frame brick building,where I was kept until I nearly froze to death. When they finally releasedme, I discovered that 1 was on the ledge of a building where if I had turnedmyself at all I would probably have fallen si.xty feet to the ground, and I wasso cold that I would have probably broken in two like an icicle.B. A. Johnson, however, proved afterwards that he was made ofsterner stuff than this by the hardships he endured in the capacityof book agent in the western part of the state in which he lived,for with bulldog tenacity he pressed with such success this humbleposition that his house, recognizing his faithfulness, called him to