O TEMPORA!

There has come over the habits of that animal of indifference, the average undergraduate, a notable and shocking change since militarism engulfed the former peaceful college routine. One of the signs of this change is in a markedly different regard to time.

That epoch is within the memory of the oldest cadet--although it is now passed away by three weeks and more of secular eternities--when nine o'clock was the dawning hour of the day, and the sun, the student, and the voice of the tocsin to the first class arose simultaneously and at once. He was a hero who attended nine o'clock classes thrice a week. He was a demi-god who managed to get his breakfast beforehand. Most men never knew that the dawn bestirs itself more than three hours before noon. Only botanists and late wassalers had witnessed the phenomenon of dew upon the grass.

Now the very chronometers by which the immortals regulate the movements of the spheres have been changed. The hour of arising has been hastened two hours, and the note of the seven o'clock bell, reviled and abhorred since forgotten time, mingles with the song of the alarm clock in a metallic discord of summons. Seven hundred men have learned that the morning and the evening are the day; and the morning has grown, like the tale of a submarine's exploits, to twice the normal size, while the evening is evanescent. Seven hundred men have acquired the habit of seeing how the great city looks before the subways to Boston are running, and the Cambridge police force, taking up the burden the stars have left off, resumes his diurnal beat. Seven hundred men have seen with Pippa the morning at seven; although the lark and the snail are missing from the wing and the thorn.

The present is a foretaste of the future. Nine o'clock was well enough in April. Seven o'clock serves in May. How will five o'clock be in June? In July we may arise before the farmer, beating the sun up at three.