Negley Farson

rdf:langString Negley Farson

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rdf:langString Negley Farson Muffed Chance of U. of P. Crew [A 1936 article regarding Farson, published in a Philadelphia newspaper.]

rdf:langString That "Odyssey" of Negley Parson, "The Way of a Transgressor", contains several references to things Philadelphian. At the outset of his picturesque career he was advised that much could be obtained in this life by playing the game of bluff. Apropos of this he pays a tribute to the thoroughness of the courses at the University of Pennsylvania. "It was hardly the right instruction" he writes "to give a young man entering the University of Pennsylvania to become a civil engineer. The Civil Engineering school of that University was no place to play the fool. "'Nine o'clock is nine o'clock' was the opening sentence of the draughting professor to his freshman class; 'and five minutes after nine might just as well have been yesterday. "At nine o'clock all the class room doors in the engineering schools closed with a sharp click. And many a morning I stood outside trying to get in." His roving and adventurous spirit found it difficult to adjust itself to collegiate routine and the Spartan code of the physics course, but he took great interest in athletics, in his Freshman year, winning numerals in crew, track and base ball. "One day," he writes, "when I was rowing 7 in the Varsity, the stroke threw a copy of the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin to me. We were in the trolley, going to the river. I read '. . . To cap the climax, Farson, a winning member of last year's freshman crew and regarded as a sure candidate for the Varsity Eight, has been declared ineligible. He is behind in his studies in the college department. "That was the way I got one of the worst blows in my life. The fury of Coach Ward cut no ice with the professor of physics. Even the intercession of Mike Murphy was in vain." This was only the prelude to a series of events which finally led him one night to pack up his belongings and leave without attempting to finish his course at Penn or at any other university.'' His unwillingness to continue long in routine positions is characteristic of his attitude in all the events of his subsequent career at home and abroad. Philadelphians will find greater interest in his works in knowing that Negley Farson, brilliant journalist and author, is James Scott Negley Farson of the Class of 1914 of the University of Pennsylvania.

rdf:langString James Scott Negley Farson (May 14, 1890 – December 13, 1960) was an American author and adventurer. A renowned fisherman, Farson wrote one of the classics of fishing literature, Going Fishing. The story of his life is told in his two volumes of autobiography: The Way Of a Transgressor and A Mirror for Narcissus.