EARLY TWIG-ERY. NO. II. REMINISCENCES OF OUR CLASS IN COLLEGE. "Whoever has to College been, Yankee Doodle, you have spoke THAT is a torn chaplet from the festive wreath, which thou, dear Doctor Bill T—, didst fling upon the altar of our affections, on that roysterous night, when we solemnized a wake over the corpse of the class of eighteen hundred and— blank. The smoke of the incense of the altar went up gloriously. It was a melancholy, frolicksome, mad symposium. Commencement was ended. The speeches had been spoken. The berries and the leaves of the bacca-laureation had been plucked. Each ingenuous youth had got his due share of "tu vero videas, probe te geras,' ,"* to start him ahead upon his journey through this world of trouble. The attentive audience had been dismissed with thanks for their civil behavior, * Part of the President's charge when he enacts the solemnity of making an A. B., and gives the diploma on commencement day,-copied from the dedicatory injunction used by Pope Benedict XIV., on the installation of Black Nuns. us. and a benediction in Latin. We were let loose to seek our fortunes. The blessing of our Alma Mater was fresh upon our heads, the memory of the happy days we had labored in her household was green and bitter in our hearts. We had her best recommendation for sobriety, honesty, and extensive capacity, in our pockets. "Optima spei juvenis,”* was wreathed around our brows. We were proud, and humbled, happy and wretched. The new sense of boyhood gone, and manhood begun, of not understood independence, crazed We walked on stilts.-We felt the earth pressing down upon us as on a clod.-We were newly married.—We had lost our mother.-The tie was severed. We were turned out of house and home.-We should never be called before the board again.-We had been torn from the breasts of our beautiful nurse, and from the blessed fountains whence we had been accustomed to suck our daily milk of Greek particles, and conic sections, and were thrown into the streets to make room for a new set of brats whom the professors had been lately getting! We were collegians no more! Good bye, black silk gown. Good bye, old trees. Good bye, bell. Good bye, janitor. But not yet had we said, Good bye, fellows. A very afflicting valediction had been pronounced for us, in the church, it is true, and much tears were talked of, by a speaker appointed by the board. But that appointment was not ours, and the pathos reached the hearts of other classes than the senior. Our valedictory orators pronounced, and sung, their valete, at Kensington House, where our parting supper was spread. We were all orators, and poets too, that night. But chiefly thee, Dear Doc, did Anacreon fill full of inspiration. Why wert thou at the foot of thy class, O thou Son of Song! * The common complimentary lie in the diploma. The declared estimate of merit of boy students does not always stellate either the honesty, or discrimination of the judges. I do not say this out of bad spite because I carried away none of the honors. My vexation is that such excellent merit as the Doctor's should have borne off what is next to disgrace. But no matter, dear Bill; thou wert up head in our love; and it is better to have warm, full hearts, without honors, than a cold, empty honor without a share in your classmates affections. Remember, too, that gigantic Dr. Mitchell was accounted worthy to be graduated in an equal rank. And thou wert comforted with the companionship of Junius T——, and Jack T—, forming with thee, a goodly musical T. party; all since, solemn medical doctors. Jun. and Jack, alas! breathe no more the atmosphere of this earth. They are with the school-fellows of Justice Silence. Years since, ye died, boys, in your yet unexhausted adolescence. Pax vobiscum! How many of us are left? Let us call the roll, and see. Shall we call the roll of the dead, and demand our friends from the grave? Aye! let us bring back the old college chapel, and the familiar lecture-rooms, and the healthy youth that defied mortality with its well-knit muscles, and the sport and the loves of boy enthusiasm. Classmates, come! At tention to the calling of the roll! ADSUM is the word. HARRY P.!- -HARRY P.!-Thou wert at the head of thy class worthily. But thou answerest not now to thy name called. Thy place is empty, and we must mark thee “absent.” O sorrow! not for thee, but for us who mourn so much genius and virtue lost to us! Noble, magnanimous, proud Harry! A boy patriot, stately, exclusive, jealous of his right of citizenship, heir of a rich estate, distrustful of the common herd, hater of Irishmen! He worshipped Hamilton. But the grave holds him now, whom the Senate-house expected ;-his body only, not his fame. Death, not Oblivion, has triumphed. Before the Destroyer came he honored his country, and kissed the soil of Greece dear to him for his love of her heroes and philosophers. He comforted blood-stained Marathon, and, dangerdaring, dealt out the charities of his country to the suffering islands of the Ægean. The Turk cursed him, and the bread which he brought to the lips of the daughters of Pindar and Demosthenes. Harry wrote his travels and experience. But he was modest, and he did not write for lucre, eking out his landlord's rent by" inklings" spattered from a bitten pen. No printer's devils, bought with unknown clean shirt-collars, extolled the praise of his unaffected story. His book knew no puffs, and has been only a thing to steal from. But he is honored where his spirit would have sought honor, and it matters not that the million of ladies'-weekly-miscellanies never had communion with his spirit. BILL J.-No. 2, answers "here," and we give hearty thanks for the hope that some good fellows are left to us. Three years and a half did studious, always prepared Billy, wear the crowning laurels of laborious desert; but he laughed, one day, out of season, during the senior year, and "alter,”—Harry,— "tulit honores." He was saved the necessity of writing a salutatory in Latin-he abjured the past, and the present, and consoled himself with a poem on "the pleasures of anticipation." It is a thing to be recorded and rejoiced at, that his anticipations were bright, and better yet, that they have not been fashions of deceitful fancy. The purest ermine on his neck, gives ample vouchers for his acknowledged excellence. Bill is the same Bill yet ;-simple, but wise ;-unpretend ing, but learned;-single-hearted,-guile never knew him, nor uneasy envy. To do what would make him happy, that was his only exertion; and he never was happy, but in doing good, or in helping along some piece of doubtful evil which was needful for the comfort of his friends. You cannot provoke him, nor make him jealous. He looked sorrowful for only two minutes, when he heard the annunciation of his lost first honor. It would not grieve him now, to be defeated by one vote, in a contest for a seat in Congress. Put Woodfall and the Revised Statutes under his arm, and he is the same boy that he was when he went down Park Place, hugging Euclid, Vince, and Greca Majora. Next-next-next;--I never did exactly comprehend the adjustment of the honors of scholarship in our class ;-but next, I believe, comes the Vale-dictator-I stand by that word. It means a dictator appointed by the board of professors, to take care that the boys bid each other good-bye before the ladies and gentlemen, according to the forms of the byelaws of the college, for that purpose duly established and enacted. I have forgiven thee, O careful minder of rules and regulations, obedient, good boy; and I love thee, now, moderately. Yet it was a pity, that, of all the class, thou only wert present on that morning when I was doomed to read, in the chapel, after prayers, before the assembled college, with crocodile penitence, a sorrowful admission of the enormity of my adjudged iniquity, and to exalt the merciful mildness of the retribution! Thy presence spoiled the oneness of the effect. The freshmen, too, might have mistaken thee for the culprit, or coupled thee with me, miserable as a joint transgressor. But the offence was not very rank, and they could not have held thee disgraced. I protest that that punishment was cruel VOL. II.-6 |