HALF TONES

Soon there will pass from Harvard in the throes of its mid-year period, going as silently as they came, those vague and shadowy Dickensian figures who receive their degrees a half a year before or a half year later than their fellows. Celebrated by no flourish of a sheriff's stick or the beating hoofs of the Governor's guard, still this bestowal of diplomas means much to the ideal who are willing to date obscurity to attain it: it is only just to grace their departure with a single token of remembrance. Akin as they are to the useless unfortunates who are designated with a cabalistic ocC., the time of their passing is significant of frustration overtrumped, of delay ignored, of a quiet determination to outpace their starters that was accomplished in Christian humility.

The unheard ode in a minor key that sings their passing acquires the rhythm of a funeral march as one realizes that these are the last brave survivors of a dying race. Next year there will be none. The midyear graduate of the future is an impossibility--for degrees are to be granted only in June. From now on the digits will bear no fractional appendages. The present species is the last of a long line. And his heritage is silence.