Fairhaven herald. [volume] (Fairhaven, Wash.) 1890-????, 1892-07-06

quite secondary affair. To the aver
age schoolgirl commencement Is stu
pendous-an awful occasion. 1t is
the Mecca toward which her eyes
are ever steadfastly turned. The bril-
liant, ambitious girl regards it as an
apotheosis-an hour when her gifts and
talents shall receive their due apprecia-
ton; the faithful, plodding girl looks
forward to it as a possibility, an oppor-
tnnity, a reward, and the frivolous girl
anticipates its chances as a show for
good clothes.
And a word about that graduating
gown. What hours Of delicious thought
it fills; what maiden meditations are
given to it. What fertility of design is
employed in its construction, and with
what rapture is it worn. Even the we'd
ding gown can scarcely compete with it
ON the line of pleasurable sensations.
Tell me, madam, you who graduated
years ago, do You remember those nights
after the last bell had rung and you
were supposed to be fast asleep in your
little bed, how you stole forth, wrapped
in blanket, and sped down the desert
ed corridors to Molly's or Peggy's or
Sues room, there to huddle in the moon
light while you munched caramels and
discussed and planned the graduating
gowns?
And then do you remember the day
when the great pasteboard box was de-
livered at your room and cry was sent
along the hall to this and that chum's
door, "Come in, girls, it has Gomez" and
when the last one had arrived and stood
IN breathless expectancy how you lifted
it from its folds of silver paper and held
1t reverently in your arms, in all its
crisp muslin and fluffy lace and flutter-
ing ribbons? Do you fancy you will
ever forget one detail Of that gown?
commencement day and class day are
neighbors, though they represent quite
different phases of college life. Glass
day is the students own hour of fun,
frolic and travesty. On this day they
may speak and act according to their
own fancy. 1t is the joyous farewell to
a happy four years-a bit Of well bred
Bohemianism. But commencement day
is quite another sort. It Is of the strictly
decorous and ceremonial type. 1t is in
vested with dignity and haloed with
majesty. If class day is Bohemian. COM
mencement is the embodiment Of col
lege conventionality.
So, then, when thissupreme day dawns,
there is in every college gentle ripple
Of well regulated excitement, tinged
with mild melancholy. A hush falls
like q benediction over the halls and
corridors. The hour Of parting is not
far away, and the groups of shining
eyed, rosy checked and white gowned
girls suddenly assume a more serious air
and Danish the gayety with which they
planted the tree or the ivy on class day.
The1- comes the hour when proud ia
theirs, happy mothers, sisters, cousins
and aunA n. With a plentiful besprinkling
of other Eirls' brothers crowd the
chapel Then that never to be forgotten
walk up the aisle TO the platform, while
the organs tones swell through the win
dows out over the campus, where the
girls will never walk again as happy,
careless students.
The salutatory-ahl who can do JUS
tice to that stately figure who rolls the
unctuous Latin from her rosy lips? Her
relatives listen in amazement. Can it
be that this profound young woman, who
is wrestling with a dead language, pun
ishing its vowels and putting its con-
sonants to fight, is their Eliza?
But when the sensation caused by this
maiden has died away it is followed by
a succession of oratorical earthquakes,