The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862

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The American student, under these influences, differs somewhat from his
European brethren. He is younger by two or three years. Though generally
from the better class, he is more, perhaps, identified with the mass of
the people, and is more of a politician than a scholar. His remarks upon
the Homeric dialects, however laudatory, are most suspiciously vague,
and though he escape such slight errors as describing the Gracchi as a
barbarous tribe in the north of Italy or the Piraeus as a meat-market of
Athens, you must beware of his classical allusions. On the other hand he
is more moral, a more independent thinker and a freer man than his
prototype across the sea. His fault is, as Bristed says, that he is
superficial; his virtue, that he is straightforward and earnest in
aiming at practical life.

Such may suffice for a few general remarks. But some memories of one of
our most important universities will better set forth the habits and
customs of the joyous student-life than farther wearisome generality.

The pleasant days are gone that I dreamed away beneath the green arcades
of the fair Elm City. But still come the budding spring and the blooming
summer to embower those quiet streets and to fill the morning hour with
birds' sweet singing. Still comes the gorgeous autumn--the dead summer
lain in state--and the cloud-robed winter to round the circling year.
Still streams the golden sunlight through the green canopies of tented
elms, and still, I ween, do pretty school-girls (feminine of student)
loiter away in flirting fascination the holiday afternoons beneath their
shade. Still do our memories haunt those old walks we loved so well: the
avenue shaded and silent like grove of Academe, fit residence of
colloquial man of science or genial metaphysician; the old cemetery with
its brown ivy-grown wall, its dark, massive evergreens, and moss-grown
stones, that, before years had effaced the inscription, told the mortal
story of early settler; elm-arched Temple street, where the midnight
moon shone so softly through the dark masses of foliage and slept so
sweetly on the sloping green. Still do those old wharves and
warehouses--ancient haunts of colonial commerce and scenes of
continental struggle--rest there in dusty quiet, hearing but murmurs of
the noisy merchant-world without; and the fair bay lies silent among
those green hills that slope southward to the Sound. Methinks I hear the
ripple of its moonlit waves as in the summer night it upbore our gallant
boat and its fair freight; the far-off music stealing o'er the bright
waters; the distant rattling of some paid-out cable as a newly arrived
bark anchors down the bay; or the lonely baying of a watch-dog at some
farm-house on the hight. I see the sail-boats bending under their canvas
and dashing the salt spray from their bows as they rush through the
smooth water, and the oyster-boats cleaving the clear brine like an
arrow, bound for Fair Haven, of many shell-fish; while sturdy sloops and
schooners--suggestive of lobsters or pineapples--bow their big heads
meekly and sway themselves at rest. I see again those long lines of
green-wooded slope, here crowned by a lonely farm-house musing solitary
on the hills as it looks off on the blue Sound, there ending abruptly in
a weather-worn cliff of splintered trap, or anon bringing down some
arable acres to the very beach, where a gray old cottage, kept in
countenance by two or three rugged poplars, like the fisher's hut,

'In der blauen Fluth sich beschaut.'

Nor can I soon forget those wild hillsides, so glorious both when the
summer floods of foliage came pouring down their sides, and when autumn,
favorite child of the year, donned his coat of many colors and came
forth to join his brethren. Then, on holiday-afternoon, free from
student-care, we climbed the East or West Rock, and looked abroad over
the distant city-spires, rock-ribbed hillside and sail-dotted sea; or
threading the devious path to the Judges' Cave, where tradition said
that in colonial times the regicides, Goffe and Whalley, lay hidden,
read on the lone rock that in the winter wilderness overhung their bleak
hiding-place, in an old inscription carved not without pain, in quaint
letters of other years, the stern and stirring old watchword:

'RESISTANCE TO TYRANTS IS OBEDIENCE TO GOD.'

Or, going further, we climbed Mount Carmel, and looked from its steep
cliff down into the solitary rock-strewn valley--

'Where storm and lightning from that huge gray wall,
Had tumbled down vast blocks, and at the base
Dashed them in fragments.'

Or went on to the Cheshire hillside, where the Roaring Brook, tumbling
down the steep ravine, flashed its clear waters into whitest foam, and
veiled the unsightly rocks with its snowy spray; or, perchance, in
cumbrous boat, floated upon Lake Saltonstall, hermit of ponds, set like
a liquid crystal in the emerald hills--an eyesore to luckless piscatory
students, but highly favored of all lovers of ice, whether applied to
the bottoms of ringing High Dutchers, or internally in shape of summer
refrigerators.

In the midst of these pleasant haunts and this fair city, lies a sloping
green of twenty or twenty-five acres, girt and bisected by rows of huge
elms, and planted with three churches, whose spires glisten above the
tall trees, and with a stuccoed State House, whose peeled columns and
crumbling steps are more beautiful in conception than execution. On the
upper side, looking down across, stretched out in a long line of eight
hundred feet, the buildings of the college stand, in dense shade. Ugly
barracks, four stories high, built of red brick, without a line of
beautifying architecture, they yet have an ancient air of repose, buried
there in the deep shade, that pleases even the fastidious eye. In the
rear, an old laboratory, diverted from its original gastronomic purpose
of hall, which in our American colleges has dispensed with commons, a
cabinet, similarly metamorphosed, and containing some magnificent
specimens of the New World's minerals; a gallery of portraits of
college, colonial and revolutionary worthies--a collection of rare
historical interest; a Gothic pile of library, built of brown sandstone,
its slender towers crowned with grinning, uncouth heads, cut in stone,
which are pointed out to incipient Freshmen as busts of members of the
college faculty; and a castellated Gothic structure of like material,
occupied by the two ancient literary fraternities, and notable toward
the close of the academic year as the place where isolated Sophomores
and Seniors write down the results of two years' study in the Biennial
Examination--make up the incongruous whole of the college proper.

Such is the place where, about the middle of September, if you have been
sojourning through the very quiet vacation in one of the almost deserted
hotels of New-Haven, you will begin to be conscious of an awakening from
the six weeks' torpor, (the _long_ vacation of hurried Americans who
must study forty weeks of the year.) Along the extended row of brick you
will begin to discern aproned 'sweeps' clearing the month and a half's
accumulated rubbish from the walks, beating carpets on the grass-plots,
re-lining with new fire-brick the sheet-iron cylinder-stoves, more
famous for their eminent Professor improver (may his shadow never be
less!) than for their heating qualities, or furbishing old furniture
purchased at incredibly low prices, of the last class, to make good as
new for the Freshmen, periphrastically known as 'the young gentlemen who
have lately entered college.' It may be, too, that your practiced eye
will detect one of these fearful youths, who, coming from a thousand
miles in the interior--from the prairies of the West or the bayous of
the South--has arrived before his time, and now, blushing unseen, is
reconnoitering the intellectual fortress which he hopes soon to storm
with 'small Latin and less Greek,' or, perchance, remembering with sad
face the distance of his old home and the strangeness of the new. A few
days more, and hackmen drive down Chapel street hopefully, and return
with trunks and carpet-bags outside and diversified specimens of
student-humanity within--a Freshman, in spite of his efforts, showing
that his as yet undeveloped character is '_summa integritate et
innocentia_;' a Sophomore, somewhat flashy and bad-hatted, a _hard_
student in the worse sense, with much of the '_fortiter in re_' in his
bearing; a Junior, exhibiting the antithetical '_suaviter in modo_;' a
Senior, whose '_otium cum dignitate_' at once distinguishes him from the
vulgar herd of common mortals. Then succeed hearty greetings of meeting
friends, great purchase of text-books, and much changing of rooms;
students being migratory by nature, and stimulated thereto by the
prospect of choice of better rooms conceded to advanced academical
standing. In which state of things the various employes of college,
including the trusty colored Aquarius, facetiously denominated Professor
_Paley_, under the excitement of numerous quarters, greatly multiply
their efforts.

But the chief interest of the opening year is clustered around the class
about to unite its destinies with the college-world. A new century of
students--

'The igneous men of Georgia,
The ligneous men of Maine,'

the rough, energetic Westerner, the refined, lethargic metropolitan,
with here and there a missionary's son from the Golden Horn or the isles
of the Pacific or even a Chinese, long-queued and meta-physical, are to
be divided between the two rival literary Societies.[4] These having
during the last term with great excitement elected their officers for
the coming 'campaign,' and held numerous 'indignation meetings,' where
hostile speeches and inquiries into the numbers to be sent down by the
various academies were diligently prosecuted to the great neglect of
debates and essays, now join issue with an adroitness on the part of
their respective members which gives great promise for political life.
Committees at the station-house await the arrival of every train, accost
every individual of right age and verdancy; and, having ascertained that
he is not a city clerk nor a graduate, relapsed into his ante-academic
state, offer their services as amateur porters, guides, or tutors,
according to the wants of the individual. Having thus ingratiated
themselves, various are the ways of procedure. Should the new-comer
prove confiding, perhaps he is told that 'there is _one_ vacancy left in
our Society, and if you wish, I will try and get it for you,' which,
after a short absence, presumed to be occupied with strenuous effort,
the amiable advocate succeeds in doing, to the great gratitude of his
Freshman friend. But should he prove less tractable, and wish to hear
both sides, then some comrade is perhaps introduced as belonging to the
other Society, and is sorely worsted in a discussion of the respective
excellencies of the two rival fraternities. Or if he be religious, the
same disguised comrade shall visit him on the Sabbath, and with much
profanity urge the claims of his supposititious Society. By such, and
more honorable means, the destiny of each is soon fixed, and only a few
stragglers await undecided the so-called 'Statement of Facts,' when with
infinite laughter and great hustling of 'force committees,' they are
preaedmitted to 'Brewster's Hall' to hear the three appointed orators of
each Society laud themselves and deny all virtue to their opponents;
which done, in chaotic state of mind they fall an easy prey to the
strongest, and with the rest are initiated that very evening with lusty
cheers and noisy songs and speeches protracted far into the night.

Nor less notable are the Secret Societies, two or three of which exist
in every class, and are handed down yearly to the care of successors.
With more quiet, but with busy effort, their members are carefully
chosen and pledged, and with phosphorous, coffins, and dead men's bones,
are awfully admitted to the mysteries of Greek initials, private
literature, and secret conviviality. Being picked men, and united, they
each form an _imperium in imperio_ in the large societies much used by
ambitious collegians. Curious as it may seem, too, many of these
societies have gained some influence and notoriety beyond college walls.
The Psi Upsilon, Alpha Delta Phi, and Delta Kappa Epsilon Societies, are
now each ramified through a dozen or more colleges, having annual
conventions, attended by numerous delegates from the several chapters,
and by graduate members of high standing in every department of letters.
Yet they have no deep significance like that of the Burschenschaft.

Close treading on the heels of Society movements, comes the annual
foot-ball game between the Freshmen and Sophomores. The former having
_ad mores majorum_ given the challenge and received its acceptance, on
some sunny autumn afternoon you may see the rival classes of perhaps a
hundred men each, drawn up on the Green in battle and motley array, the
latter consisting of shirt and pants, unsalable even to the sons of
Israel, and huge boots, perhaps stuffed with paper to prevent hapless
abrasion of shins. The steps of the State House are crowded with the
'upper classes,' and ladies are numerous in the balconies of the
New-Haven Hotel. The umpires come forward, and the ground is cleared of
intruders. There is a dead silence as an active Freshman, retiring to
gain an impetus, rushes on; a general rush as the ball is _warned_; then
a seizure of the disputed bladder, and futile endeavors to give it
another impetus, ending in stout grappling and the endeavor to force it
through. Now there is fierce issue; neither party gives an inch. Now
there is a side movement and roll of the struggling orb as to relieve
the pressure. Now one party gives a little, then closes desperately in
again on the encouraged enemy. Now a dozen are down in a heap, and there
is momentary cessation, then up and pressing on again. Here a fiery
spirit grows pugnacious, but is restrained by his class-mates; there
another has his shirt torn off him, and presents the picturesque
appearance of an amateur scarecrow. There are, in short, both

'Breaches of peace and pieces of breeches,'

until the stronger party carries the ball over the bounds, or it gets
without the crowd unobserved by most, and goes off hurriedly under the
direction of some swift-footed player to the same goal. Then mighty is
the cheering of the victors, and woe-begone the looks, though defiant
the groans of the vanquished. And thus, with much noise and dispute, and
great confounding of umpire, they continue for three, four, or five
games, or until the evening chapel-bell calls to prayers. In the evening
the victors sing paeans of victory by torch-light on the State House
steps, and bouquets, supposed to be sent by the fair ones of the
balconies, are presented and received with great glorification.

Nor less exciting and interesting in college annals, is the Burial of
Euclid. The incipient Sophomores, assisted by the other classes, must
perform duly the funeral rites of their friend of Freshman-days, by
nocturnal services at the 'Temple.' Wherefore, toward midnight of some
dark Wednesday evening in October, you may see masked and
fantastically-dressed students by twos and threes stealing through the
darkness to the common rendezvous. An Indian chief of gray leggins and
grave demeanor goes down arm in arm with the prince of darkness, and a
portly squire of the old English school communes sociably with a
patriotic continental. Here is a reinforcement of 'Labs,' (students of
chemistry,) noisy with numerous fish-horns; there a detachment of
'Medics,' appropriately armed with thigh-bones, according to their
several resources. Then, when gathered within the hall, a crowded mass
of ugly masks, shocking bad hats, and antique attire, look down from
the steep slope of seats upon the stage where lies the effigy of Father
Euclid, in inflammable state. After a voluntary by the 'Blow Hards,'
'Horne Blenders,' or whatever facetiously denominated band performs the
music, there is a mighty singing of some Latin song, written with more
reference to the occasion than to correct quantities, of which the
following opening stanza may serve as a specimen:

'Fundite nunc lacrymas,
Plorate Yalenses:
Euclid rapuerunt fata,
Membra et ejus inhumata
Linquimus tres menses.'

The wild, grotesque hilarity of those midnight songs can never be
forgotten. Then come poem and funeral oration, interspersed with songs,
and music by the band--'Old Grimes is dead,' 'Music from the Spheres,'
and other equally solemn and rare productions. Then are torches lighted,
and two by two the long train of torch-bearers defiles through the
silent midnight streets to the sound of solemn music, and passing by the
dark cemetery of the real dead, bear through 'Tutor's Lane' the coffin
of their mathematical ancestor. They climb the hill beyond, and commit
him to the flames, invoking Pluto, in Latin prayer, and chanting a final
dirge, while the flare of torches, the fearful grotesqueness of each
uncouth disguised wight, and the dark background of the encircling
forest, make the wild mirth almost solemn.

So ends the fun of the closing year; and with the exception of the
various excitements of burlesque debate on Thanksgiving eve, when the
smallest Freshman in either Society is elected President _pro tempore;_
of the _noctes ambrosianae_ of the secret societies; of appointments,
prize essays, and the periodical issue of the _Yale Literary_, now a
venerable periodical of twenty years' standing; the severe drill of
college study finds little relaxation during the winter months. Three
recitations or lectures each day, a review each day of the last lesson,
review of and examination on each term's study, with two biennial
examinations during the four years' course, require great diligence to
excel, and considerable industry to keep above water. But with the
returning spring the unused walks again are paced, and the dry keels
launched into the vernal waters. Again, in the warm twilight of evening,
you hear the laugh and song go up under the wide-spreading elms. Now,
too, comes the Exhibition of the Wooden Spoon, where the low-appointment
men burlesque the staid performances of college, and present the lowest
scholar on the appointment-list with an immense spoon, handsomely carved
from rosewood, and engraved with the convivial motto: '_Dum vivimus
vivamus_.'

Then, too, come those summer days upon the harbor, when the fleet
club-boats, and their stalwart crews, like those of Alcinous,

[Greek: 'kouroi anarriptein ala pedo,']

in their showy uniforms, push out from Ryker's; some bound upward past
the oyster-beds of Fair Haven, away up among the salt-marsh meadows,
where the Quinnipiac wanders under quaint old bridges among fair, green
hills; some for the Light, shooting out into the broad waters of the
open bay, their feathered oars flashing in the sunlight; some for
Savin's Rock, where among the cool cedars that overshadow the steep
rock, they sing uproarious student-songs until the dreamy beauty of
ocean, with its laughing sunlight, its white sails, and green, quiet
shores, like visible music, shall steal in and fill the soul until the
noisy hilarity becomes eloquent silence. And now, as in the
twilight-hour they are again afloat, you may hear the song again:

'Many the mile we row, boys,
Merry, merry the song;
The joys of long ago, boys,
Shall be remembered long.
Then as we rest upon the oar,
We raise the cheerful strain,
Which we have often sung before,
And gladly sing again.'

But perhaps the most interesting day of college-life is
'Presentation-Day,' when the Seniors, having passed the various ordeals
of _viva voce_ and written examinations, are presented by the senior
tutor to the President, as worthy of their degrees. This ceremony is
succeeded by a farewell poem and oration by two of the class chosen for
the purpose, after which they partake of a collation with the college
faculty, and then gather under the elms in front of the colleges. They
seat themselves on a ring of benches, inside of which are placed huge
tubs of lemonade, (the strongest drink provided for public occasions,)
long clay pipes, and great store of mildest Turkey tobacco. Here, led on
by an amateur band of fiddlers, flutists, etc., through the long
afternoon of 'the leafy month of June,' surrounded by the other classes
who crowd about in cordial sympathy, they smoke manfully, harangue
enthusiastically, laugh uproariously, and sing lustily, beginning always
with the glorious old Burschen song of 'Gaudeamus':

'Gaudeamus igitur
Juvenes dum sumus:
Post jucundam juventutem,
Post molestam senectutem,
Nos habebit humus.'

* * * * *

'Pereat tristitia,
Pereant osores,
Pereat diabolus,
Quivis antiburschius
Atque irrisores.'

Then as the shadows grow long, perhaps they sing again those stirring
words which one returning to the third semi-centennial of his Alma
Mater, wrote with all the warmth and power of manly affection:

* * * * *

'Count not the tears of the long-gone years,
With their moments of pain and sorrow;
But laugh in the light of their memories bright,
And treasure them all for the morrow.
Then roll the song in waves along,
While the hours are bright before us,
And grand and hale are the towers of Yale,
Like guardians towering o'er us.

* * * * *

'Clasp ye the hand 'neath the arches grand
That with garlands span our greeting.
With a silent prayer that an hour as fair
May smile on each after meeting:
And long may the song, the joyous song,
Roll on in the hours before us,
And grand and hale may the elms of Yale
For many a year bend o'er us.'

Then standing in closer circle, they pass around to give, each to each,
a farewell grasp of the hand; and amid that extravagant merriment the
lips begin to quiver, and eyes grow dim. Then, two by two, preceded by
the miscellaneous band, playing 'The Road to Boston,' and headed by a
huge base-viol, borne by two stout fellows, and played by a third, they
pass through each hall of the long line of buildings, giving farewell
cheers, and at the foot of one of the tall towers, each throws his
handful of earth on the roots of an ivy, which, clinging about those
brown masses of stone, in days to come, he trusts will be typical of
their mutual, remembrance as he breathes the silent prayer: 'Lord, keep
our memories green!'

So end the college-days of these most uproarious of mirth-makers and
hardest of American students; and the hundred whose joys and sorrows
have been identified through four happy years, are dispersed over the
land. They are partially gathered again at Commencement, but the broken
band is never completely united. On the third anniversary of their
graduation, the first class-meeting takes place; and the first happy
father is presented with a silver cup, suitably inscribed. On the tenth,
twentieth, and other decennial years, the gradually diminishing band, in
smaller and smaller numbers, meet about the beloved shrine, until only
two or three gray-haired men clasp the once stout hand and renew the
remembrance of 'the days that are gone.'

'They come ere life departs,
Ere winged death appears.
To throng their joyous hearts
With dreams of sunnier years:
To meet once more
Where pleasures sprang,
And arches rang
With songs of yore.'

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: 'In the fourteenth century, Novella de Andrea, daughter of
the celebrated canonist, frequently occupied her father's chair; and her
beauty was so striking, that a curtain was drawn before her in order not
to distract the attention of the students.']

[Footnote 2: Vol. i. p. 392.]

[Footnote 3: Vol. iii. pp. 379 and 473.]

[Footnote 4: The Linonian Society was founded in 1753; The Brothers in
Unity, fifteen years later, in 1768.]

GO IN AND WIN.

Will nothing rouse the Northmen
To see what they can do?
When in one day of our war-growth
The South are growing two?
When they win a victory it always counts a pair,
One at home in Dixie, and another _over there_!

North, you have spent your millions!
North, you have sent your men!
But if the war ask billions,
You must give it all again.
Don't stop to think of what you've done--it's very fine and true--
But in fighting for our _life_, the thing is, _what we've yet to do_.

Who dares to talk of party,
And the coming President,
When the rebels threaten 'bolder raids,'
And all the land is rent?
How _dare_ we learn 'they gather strength,' by every telegraph,
If an army of a million could have scattered them like chaff!

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