THE BOOK OF THE CLASS OF NINETEEN-ELEVEN 23
OME of those people,—who lacked that subtle something called class-spirit, a thing
which covers all faults and extols all virtues,—have been heard to say that 1911 was
not a singing class.
Now that is manifestly untrue and most wretchedly unfair, for everyone sang, whether
she could keep a tune or not. Especially those who could not. This feeling for the heroic
seemed to urge them on to the most daring attempts to rush the heights of melody quite
unaided by those arbitrary little steps which the over exact have seen fit to include in the
octave and call a scale, No more deadly blow could be dealt a classmate than to request
her not to sing on all occasions. Of course we grant that there were some saints like Hoby and
Leila who would consent to smother their musical emotions for the so-called good of the class;
but this was only on occasions such as when Pallas Athene had to be led out to be
decently murdered, the corpse being properly interred in the cloister. With them the
murder might have approached the indecent. During this operation they were quite for-
bidden to utter a sound, and as result of this stern prohibition spent many a wet morning in
a snug bed bemoaning the bitter fate which decreed that discretion was the better part of
valour, and their slumber more valuable to the community than their song. Oh! this nipping
the bud of rising genius is one of the necessarily hard things of college life. Who knows but
that many of our now muted song-birds might have become Patti’s? I don’t mean chicken
ai la Miller,—but real prima donnas, stirring the hearts and clouding the vision of the en-
tranced audience, with never a sound to cause the spine to quiver or the flesh to creep as
it used to do in those early days of their musical careers when the shattered committee cast
them from the music room with cries for mercy. Oh, who knows but what our Alice or our
Rosie might now have been climbing the steep Wagnerian slopes, balancing easily on the
highest peaks (not shrieks, lest you misquote me) and holding the throbbing attention of
the vast opera house with the “liquid” notes of the Rhine Maidens.
