194

184 THE BOOK OF THE CLASS OF NINETEEN-ELEVEN







Sentor Class Supper

Y last recollections of class meetings centre about that mysterious and feverish dis-
cussion as to whether we should or should not do something with the pictures in
the class book. Presumably I am the only person in the class who never understood

the rights of that question. In those days I came in late—heaven save the mark—and sat
for a miserable twenty minutes on the floor of Pem East sitting-room, struggling with
delayed cerebration. But in one lucid interval we discussed Senior Class Supper, and it
was then that Scottie delivered herself of the text of this piece. “Senior class supper,”
said she, “is not altogether a humorous affair.” It is my conviction that all class book
articles should be more rather than less replete with witticisms. But to-night—a whole
week later than the last possible date of going to press of that same class book—as I look
back upon Senior class supper, I remember none of the jokes perpetrated thereat, unless
it be that one of Scottie’s about the returned alumnz. I do remember quite plainly how
beautiful and how hopefully young we were, and how completely, in spite of “absent mem-
bers,”’ we filled the big hollow square of tables in Pembroke dining room. Like our own good
selves—the connotation of my subject calls for good words, if I say them as shouldn’t—we
were not too serious. There were jokes, as my forgetfulness bears witness. Moreover,
Macbeth and Macduff “laid on,” most appropriately accompanied by the good old bagpipe
bass of Iddo Rogers, and all the mutes were allowed one final fling at tunes remotely modeled
on the songs of 1911, like Frankenstein on the human frame. We were not wearing our hearts
on our sleeves, so to speak, but beneath all our gayety there was a deep common understand-
ing of one another, a shared affection stronger than the strength of individual differences.
It was the spirit of the class perfected for the moment, the class which never could learn to
co-operate around a May pole. It was the gathered fruit of four years life together; mutual
respect and forbearance, with the comradeship which is offspring of these, generous admiration
which asks no return, discerning sympathy, friendships over which chance and change can
have no power. At the instant when we had locked arms for auld lang syne, each one of us
must have been happy in her place in that gallant circle, so soon to be irrevocably broken.

Perhaps it was as well that our procession to the class tree should have been undertaken
in a steady downpour of rain. Certainly it was characteristic of our inevitable irregularities
that we should appear under the Arch in motley,—hockey skirts, jumpers, raincoats, slickers,
—calculated to destroy all superficial seriousness. Our toast mistress, lately presiding with