40 THE BOOK OF THE CLASS OF NINETEEN-ELEVEN
This ought to be
Freshman Class Supper
UT I never wrote anything funny in my life you wail; and yet the cruel editor of
the class book who is probably one of the wits of the ‘class and has made funny
speeches on every occasion when they could be made and on some when she thought
she was being serious,* only smiles blandly, answering, “Oh, mine’s perfectly flat. Just
write anything and send it in by—’’ Let’s not mention the date, it’s so long passed before
you get the ambition to attempt the impossible. Then after a while you do spoil some
potentially pleasant morning being funny, but somehow your own jokes are too feeble and
you don’t think a class book article can be constructed like a speech—a collection of old
favorites, e. g., ““a woman, generally speaking, is generally speaking,” unified by “that
reminds me,” so you throw away your first attempt and wait until the gentle editor writes to
you that someone else has designed a beautiful heading for your article on “ Freshman Class
Supper,” let us say, and so because you don’t want the artist’s work to go unlabeled, you
sit down again to write that article.
There are two subjects tabooed by the Harvard English Department (and doubtless by
the same department at Johns Hopkins)—‘The Squirrels” and “ Why I hate to write daily
themes.”” Of course they ought to be tabooed, but what can you do when you remember
nothing about the subject assigned, but, say like Isabelle Miller, “I don’t know that question
but Pll answer another about the same length”? At any rate that’s the explanation of this
long preface to nothing at all, for as an honest fact that first class supper is as hazy in my
mind as the first week of college. I confusedly remember a feeling of expectation and of
importance as a class, and the only incidents I can recall are wearing the first dress I ever
had without a high neck and singing:
“* Nineteen eleven is the Stuff.”
* Leila and E., I cannot decide for which of us this is meant, but we are not eager. Take your choice.—Ed.
Frances Porter.
