Freshman Show
and flunk over it! How we thrill and emote during the performance of it!
How, the following days, we wear our corsages until they look like herbs and
simples! How, all year, when called upon to sing, we wail out the curtain song
in close—nay, compact, harmony; the vaguely indefinite curtain song, having
nothing to do with the show—but with references to “the sea’’ and ‘‘the lea,” or
aie. SHOW! What a night of nights! How we stay awake and cut
“distant shore,” “true evermore” or even “night and delight,”” sure to make it
a success and to cause departing seniors singing it three years later to expire with
grief.
Our Freshman Show was glorious... As far as details go, I remember it in the
vaguest fashion; but I’m sure it-was glorious.
Preparations, unofficial, began after Christmas vacation, when everyone who
had seen a musical show brought back ‘‘ideas,” some of which were good and some
of which, along with their promoters, had to be handled as carefully as infernal
machines. There were intense meetings of the committee, accomplishing nothing;
and there was a politely uncomfortable meeting of the same committee with-P.. T-;
wherein that lady set forth the rules of Freshman Show (with all of which we were
perfectly acquainted) and wherein the committee, each waiting for the other to
speak, looked agonizingly pleasant, and wondered when it should try to go. We
were to have no conversation in our show—absolutely no conversation. (It 1s
clear P. T. never wrote a Freshman Show.) She had some balmy notion that a
performance is simpler to put on if it is all danced and sung. (It is still clearer
that P. T. never heard us dance nor watched us sing.) So we wrote a scene in
rhythm—a chef d’ceuvre—and thought ourselves deliciously sinful.
Rehearsals were pandemoniac gatherings in the gym. I believe we were
allowed four official rehearsals for the production. These gatherings were composed
chiefly of absences. Such as came, sat on the floor talking violently. There were
continual misunderstandings as to hours and we learned to smile in the face of such
interruptions as the model school bounding in to do model gym, or an obscure class
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