THE BOOK OF THEfCLASS OF NINETEEN-ELEVEN 159
by semesters. Athletics awake only when lectures sleep. Meals and class-meetings are
shoved into lectureless moments. Nelson himself was born for the sole purpose of ringing
the knell of the passing lecture."
Lectures are of two sorts, voluntary and involuntary. Involuntaries are of an
inferior order. They are heterogeneous, frequently heterodox. They occur gratis at
spasmodic intervals. When not forcibly crowded out, as many as five may come in a
single week-end. They are provided by the various presidents, 7. e., of the college and
of the various clubs, and not even the depths of the stack-room or the swimming-pool
can protect the student from the rapacious clutch of the harpies despatched by the
presiding officer of the association under whose auspices, etc.
The voluntary lectures are of superior quality. In the absence of a cut rule they
may be easily omitted; that is, if you do not care about having your course book signed.
Voluntaries cannot exceed the time limit, unless in self-defence against undergrad meetings
and water polo you select a benighted post major that meets at Low Buildings. Voluntaries
are the life and the ornament of the college. They are planned, cut out and trimmed,
not by a single department, but by the whole faculty sitting in august council about the
Crimson Velvet Chair. They are embellished and embroidered by the advice of the Senior
Class and the Students’ Council. They are passed upon by the
office and sketched in the program. In short, they are Tailor-
made.
For eightfsemesters the docile maiden is provided with this
carefully prepared product. At the beginning of each day she
seats herselfZat the feet! of an instructor with a blank note-book
and a receptive mind, and every evening by the light of her
midnight electricity she tabs her notes and underlines with
pains and red ink all the jokes found on the neatly written page.
At the end of each semester, examinations purge her of all dross.
Finally she is tried once, twice, thrice, in some cases even four
times, in the oral fires, a method of refinement peculiar to this
particular factory, and warranted to produce a type of goods of
a quality elsewhere unattainable. If she survives she is pro-
nounced sterling and stamped with the mark and seal of perfec-
tion—T aylor-maid.
Marcaret Jerrerys HosBarr.
