A Plea for an Anrient Institution
Whereas, it has pleased the fates and the faculty to abolish the semi-annual receptions,
so dear to the hearts of all of us, we, the class of 1906, humbly petition the aforesaid fates
and faculty to return to ancient tradition, and to restore to us this best beloved of our rights
and privileges. In reason thereof, we urge the following:
I. The receptions provided the whole college with instruction. Often have we seen the
students, singly or in groups, engaged in earnest conversation with their professors, drink-
ing in eagerly the wisdom of the ages, while other students stood anxiously near, awaiting
their turn, and planning questions that would open to them the vast stores of knowledge
stored away in academic minds.
II. They stimulated the students to a fondness for beauteous apparel. On these
occasions did the soberest amongst us cast aside in scorn their lowly garments, and appear
resplendent as the lilies of the field.
IlI.. They revealed to the outside world, and, indeed, to ourselves, that we were not
cloistered nuns, but were merely temporarily banished from the haunts of men. Moreover,
they lightened to a wonderful degree our dread sentence of four years at hard labor, and
kept us from forgetting the good old customs of our native land. For men, old, middle-
aged, and infantile, clad in festive evening garb, came to our receptions. Often they
augmented the adoring groups around some professor, revered because of his learning;
ever and anon they captured some lovely student, and bore her off to a lonely dim-lit
corner, there to worship at the feet of knowledge. Small wonder, then, that these gather-
ings were a success, where learning flowed for all as plentifully as milk and honey.
IV. And lest those eager to acquire information should faint from exhaustion, there
were real milk and honey, not unmixed with more solid foods. And he who in his haste to
catch the train had come without his dinner could feast himself, if he so desired, on both
sides of Pembroke. Now and again we have seen some hungry traveller, or perhaps a still
more hungry student, eat, and eat, and eat again, from the bounteous stores so liberally
provided. What a blessed sight it is to see the gnawing pangs of starvation appeased!
V. The receptions inculcated within us a love of harmony. All evening long the melo-
dious notes of a string orchestra sounded in our ears; and when the clock pointed to the
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