The Worcester spy. [volume] (Worcester, Mass.) 1898-1904, 1899-11-07
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER Z, 1899.
TURKEY OR CROW

Smith college is in a state of fer
ment over the action of the faculty in
shortening the Thanksgiving vacation
from week to one day. The young
women of the institution declare that
one day is not, except in exceptional
cases, enough to allow the students to
go home in, and that the order is tam
tamount to forbidding them to go
home for Thanksgiving
What is Thanksgiving to them if they
can't spend it at home? And why should
they be thankful when the incentive
to thankfulness is destroyed? Public
sentiment in the college is said to have
reached a point where President Seelye
and several of the professors have been
burned in effigy, while President See
lye, aside from receiving countless res
olutions and petitions from the girls,
has been fairly bombarded by letters
from their parents, protesting that they
must have their daughters home on
Thanksgiving, and censuring the I'M
happy man for allowing such an I'M
patriotic rule to be made. In case the
faculty weakens, the girls will hold a
grand carnival on the campus, in which
mastodon turkey will be crowned
king and borne aloft on the shoulders
of the triumphant students.
The incident is interesting. While
a Thanksgiving at home is not
among the vested rights of man
kind, it has come to form an
integral part of the Americans year.
Originally established to thank God for
his manifold blessings, tha day has
come to be consecrated to the genius Of
the family, just as Christmas is con-
secrated to children, and the Fourth
of July to the small boy. The churches
is a mighty unfortunate table around
which does not gather on THANKSGIVING
day all those members, young and old
who still walk the green footstool. The
religious idea is waning, but the family
ideal is waxing in Thanksgiving day
1t is therefore healthy sign when 800
or 1000 young women from all quarters
of this big nation yearn to spend the
day in the bosoms of their families.
In yet another way the position of
the fair girl undergraduates at North
ampton is interesting. The feminine
sex is made up of stern individualists
Women will work for themselves, but
they will not work for each other. If
they had possessed, as a sex, the large
disinterestedness that most men above
a certain moral grade possess, woman
as a class would have been farther
advanced than she is The ability for
concerted action is, when exerted to a
proper end, one of the noblest of mans
Characteristics, Now, the Smith col
lege girls seem to be showing in a
primitive form, this ability. Mixed UP
with the lark of the thing is something
like a determination to stand by the
other fellows and gain a point which
to certain of the contestants is no per
hsonal advantage.
1t is to be hoped that the victorious
side in the sQuabble will issue bull
let1ns on Thanksgiving day. If the
students are going to feast on parental
turkeys, the public wants to know it.
If the faculty is to be doomed to eat
crow, as the girls threaten, and wish
they hadn't with the wishbones, the
public is interested in that, too Next
to a lover, the world loves a good
fighter. If President Seelye and the
faculty have not acted from caprice
in curtailing the Thanksgiving holi-
day, but from necessity, as seems most
likely, let them stand by their guns.
In any event, there is no fear that
the Worcester students will not be able
to toy with their birds under the pa
ternaI vine and fig tree.