The note regarding D’Alfonce appears again in the same place in the catalogues issued by the University in 1853 and 1854, and in those from 1855 to 1860 inclusive his name is listed under “Faculty, Instructors and Officers.” Professor William M. Thornton contributes the following picture: “A pretty sight might have been seen from the foot of the Lawn. As the visitor reached the apex of the triangle his eye would have rested on a great, circular framed building in the midst of the field below. Near it would have been seen a company of two or three hundred students, all in an easy uniform of blue blouse and grey trousers, drawn up in rank and file. At their head stood a lively Frenchman, an ex-soldier, issuing the word of command. And under his orders this regiment of college boys would go through a series of complex exercises, marching and countermarching, ... all out in the open air.... Or, entering the building at an earlier hour, he would have found these same boys turning upon bars, swinging upon ropes, brandishing broadswords or foils, dumb-bells and clubs. And then, as the sun descended and before the great bell of the Rotunda rang out its evening summons, he would have heard the Frenchman, in his splendid baritone, raise the chant of the Marseillaise, or some other martial strain, and all the boys would join in, and the great chorus of manly voices would rise ... upon the ... air. The soldierly Frenchman was D’Alfonce....”[241] Frederick Chase, writing on “the beginnings of athletics at Dartmouth,”[242] says that “gymnastics were introduced in a small way by the erection, in 1852, by the enthusiasts, in the ravine east of the observatory, of a frame popularly called the gallows, by some the ‘Freshman’s Gallows....’ The apparatus consisted of nothing but two suspended ropes with rings, and a horizontal bar (it is referred to elsewhere as ‘two posts and a rude horizontal rail’).... It was a feature of that spot until superseded by Mr. Bissell’s Gymnasium building, with its wealth of apparatus, in 1867.”