32 THE BOOK OF THE CLASS OF NINETEEN-ELEVEN

 

 

Sophomore year the scene shifters, led by Peggy and Catherine, sought pastures new.
The stage was reared at the non-pulpit end of the Chapel.

“We made up in the Interview Room
And costumed in the Hall.”

Never was Taylor so desecrated before. We are therefore not surprised to find the same
class, in their Senior year, led by the intrepid members of the English Club, inviting Mr.
Hadfield to render Kipling from the pulpit and to arrange his rouge pots and powder puffs
on the altar of the first president. That performance resulted disastrously, for on the ensuing
Sunday night the Bible was found to have vanished mysteriously, and Dr. Barton and I
were forced to make an agonised search for it while Catherine held the minister in sweet
conversation. We were just on the point of wiring Mr. Hadfield But I am straying
from my story. As Sophomores our impiety met with less frightful consequences. It is
true that only one person at a time could shift scenery without falling into the laps of the
faculty, and 1912’s themes were in danger of being made up more rapidly than the English
Department had bargained for, but bruises soon heal and the odours of even spirit-glue can
be dissipated by gardenias.

Then came His Excellency and the new stage and the real green-room. Such luxury
enabled our energy to manifest itself in a new direction. Catherine transformed Indian
clubs into the hoofs of an orderly’s charger, and Scottie and I displayed our recently acquired
knowledge of physics in the manipulation of a telephone.

Junior year was a study in dramatics sans stage, sans scenery, sans play, sans rehear-
sals, sans all the essentials and accompaniments of the art. Nevertheless Rock produced
an eroplane; Pem, an aurora borealis; and Denbigh, a flock.

Senior year introduced Shaw and Shots. We used caps for Press Cuttings with the
result that I was deaf for a week. When Peg told me that I’d have to be the fusillade in
Arms and the Man, I nearly wept. Instead I procured a pistol from Van Horn. It kicked
at the dress rehearsal. Scottie and Hoff got no cues—or at least none at the right time—
and I shot Pruss in the leg. So next day I went to the Oracle. I had to wait until the
President had finished consulting it on the subject of the new paint on the lamp-posts.
But its answer was not cryptic. It simply lent me its own gun. With pride I sat me down
on the Gym steps and rehearsed the fusillade once, twice, thrice, again and yet again until
I was forcibly stopped by a message from the Deanery inquiring whether interclass feuds