L'

CHRISTMAS.

IFE takes on a different aspect, when looked at through the spectacles of senior year, from what it had when we first gazed at it with the smoked glasses of our freshman days. Since then we have worn away a good deal of the dust that obscured our vision, and experience has made our eyesight clearer. Perhaps we do not possess that fiery ardor which once burned so bright within us; and although we may have a few more strings to our bow, we do not stretch the arc with any greater strength or with as much enthusiasm.

Can you remember, reverend Senior, how you felt, three years ago at this time when you were thinking of going home for Christmas, and how you pictured to yourself the awe that your personality as a college "man"-and a Yale man, at that!-was bound to inspire in the breasts of those fair ones with whom you used to play hide-andseek only a few years before? Can you recall how, on reaching home, your breast heaved with pride when a stranger asked you what college you attended? And

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how, afterward, when asked to what class you belonged, you inaudibly muttered "Freshman," in the hope that your questioner might perhaps misunderstand you and take you for a sophomore?

Yet, after all, you were proud of being a freshman. You knew, of course, away down in the bottom of your heart, that a freshman, no matter how important a personage he might be in his own immediate family, was really not at the top of the heap in the social organization of the university which gave him an existence. But still you felt that the fact that you had attained the dignity of being even a freshman implied a definite amount of learning on your part, and assuredly the ability to pass certain extensively advertised examinations which for years you had looked upon as almost impassable barriers on the road to fame. What few conditions you might have you kept carefully concealed from the public gaze. Yes; you were proud of being a freshman; and in your own private apartments you proclaimed this fact aloud. This, indeed, was very laudable. Everybody has to start at the foot of the ladder, and it is no disgrace to tread in the footsteps of greater men who have gone before. It may perhaps be temporarily unpleasant; but who ever reached the dessert without first tasting of the soup and the fish? I have even known people who had to take a pill before the soup!

I think that, as a rule, all freshman are proud of being such. That is what makes a good class. Self-appreciation, to a certain extent, is good; and is often to be preferred to self-depreciation. In the case of this lower order of underclassmen, it is good that they have a little appreciation of themselves, for it usually happens that no one else has any for them.

I believe, nevertheless, that nine out of ten men who graduate, if asked what year they would rather have over again, would unhesitatingly pronounce in favor of freshman year. The reason they give is that everything was so new to them then, and that they enjoyed it all so much. They undoubtedly did. I know we did. We

Dec., 1890] A Dissertation on Going Home for Christmas.

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went home at Christmas time loaded up to the brim with wonderful stories of college life, and we took every opportunity which offered to inflict them on our friends. In accordance with that true Yale spirit which we had already commenced to imbibe, we possessed a commendable respect for our superiors in learning, to wit, the upperclassmen. We were furthermore not ashamed of acknowledging this,—a fact which aroused unconcealed disgust in the hearts of the afore-mentioned fair ones, who did not see why we should allow ourselves to be "trampled on, even if we were freshmen." Our views of being “trampled on " and theirs were evidently at variance. Of course we did not like to have them look at it in the way they did, but we could not help it; we could not explain to them that intangible and indescribable something which, in the short period of our stay in New Haven, had made us really appreciate that we did not after all occupy such a very important office in the welfare of the universe, or even of the university. To make up for this little misunderstanding, however, we were studiously careful, in talking of them, to call the captains of the teams by their nicknames and to speak familiarly of the professors and of all the well-known men in college. This gave the impression, at least, that we were a part of the great whole which constituted the college.

Nevertheless, with all these little disadvantages,—which we, however, did not consider as disadvantages—we looked with feverish anticipation across the examination schedule to the day when we should go home. We had that natural and unquenchable desire to appear in our native heath for the first time as a "college man." And when at last we did get home, we had attained unalloyed bliss. To my mind, there are few things in college life superior to the freshman's first vacation. He enjoys it thoroughly, and all there is of it.

What a difference between the going home to our first holiday and the going home to our last! Now we have become confirmed grumblers. If everything in the last few days of the term is not fixed exactly in accordance