Class Day.

To the bright and charming maiden who attends her first class day at Harvard the day is "a wild, delirious heaven of ice-cream and salad, of lovely young men and ecstatic round dances, of elm-shaded avenues and star lit walks, and softly breathing music and indescribable leave-takings." To her sister who begins to feel the growing soberness of things it is simply a period of a few moments of instructive conversation with some pleasant and learned professor, with, perhaps, a shade of innocent corner flirtation with lively proctors and studious tutors. How changed from that first class day when nearly a quarter of a millenium ago the first class of Harvard graduated and took their leave in a "sober and God-fearing fashion." Those were the strong and sturdy days when Fair Harvard was known as "Charles H's wooden college." when at commencement "Ye General Court of ye Massachusetts Colony did sit down at meat with ye lads to encourage them." In those primitive days the corporation treasury rolled in a maze of "pecks of wheat" and "mellow apples," paid by the people for the support of learning. Those were the halcyon days when the alma mater was herself sustained by milk from "ye udders of certain notable fat cattle."

Now class day has become an institution of equal importance with the stately and scholastic day of gowns,- commencement. The General Court no longer feast beneath the classic shades, they have given place to their fair daughters. Nor is it upon the "pecks of wheat" and "mellow apples" that the daughters feast. The "sober and God-fearing fashion" has passed into a round of jollity that shames the sober bachelor graduates who wander about aimlessly seeking they know not what, and territies papa and mamma in their watch-towers of observation with its desperate flirtation.

How soon we learn to discriminate between the honest maiden from the rural districts and that Cambridge girl who has not missed the "ring around the tree" for a dozen years. The Cambridge maiden has acquired a taste for college students as a Parisian for absinthe, and can be happy with anything from a sub-freshman to a Divinity student.

And yet in all the joy and gladness there runs a thread of sadness. No more shall the familiar walls re echo the cry of '85,- each class as it leaves becomes simply a memory of the past. It is fitting that that memory should be drowned in a last prolonged rejoicing. The day on which the sun nowhere else shines so brightly, on which even the ancient gods seem nowhere to smile so kindly as at the college which gave it birth is a fitting close to the years of labor. Then let us take leave of the day with its coolness and its quiet, its sweet, soft music, its sentimental walks, and its whispered words of farewell.