New-York tribune., 1903-02-01

time he steal at the armory fixing UP his
box, he is taking his queen and her mother
about the campus, where for the first time he
see poetry in the bulletin board South
Middle in the forbidding exterior of Alumni
Hall. For week in the year the Yale
dresses up" Shines as the undergraduate puts
it. He tosses his old crush hat into corner
and dons his silk ne and gloves. His fannels
and sweater put aside for the frock coat.
"Chesty' in this regalia. he parades the campus
with his charge. II tries not to look embar-
rassed when he passes crowd of his old chums
at the fence" He goes through the week with
a zest that leaves him inert for the remainder
of the term, and likewise strapped" ana says
he will go stag next year. only when next
year comes around he doesn't. Teas. receptions
a-d blow outs he attends with bewider.ng
pidity, and dances through the prom" tilI
dawn with relay of collars.
But if the juniors and the other upper class
men enjoy themselves the prom the fresh
man does not. To Yale freshman tradition
and necessity, have made this the most trying
week OF the college year. The prom brings
JOY and anticipation to the junior and senior
and in large measure to the sophomore but TO
the freshman it is gall and bitterness. At all
other times in the year he can make himself a
parsonage Of some Importance the campus
but in prem week he is utterly neglected.
to retire to, he has to stay away from the
PROM, or if he uses one of the half dozen
tickets ne has bought he cannot dance on it,
and IL he goes TO the Glee Club concert he has
to sit in the gallery. To cap the climax. some
girls who do not know about these things
think that freshman friends are "rnean things
because they do not ask them to the Junior
promenade 1t is ali the harder for a fresh
man because. until recently. he has been made
TO fha brrILr Of
freshman indeed who is not held up by some
upper class canvasser and made to take his
five or six more tickets, not one of which he,
can The faculty have lately CurtaiIed this
practice considerably but a remnant of il still
remains.
II they cannot enjoy the week there is one
thing that the freshmen do. and that is to
let the upper class men and their guests know
how they feel about it. Fer that purpose they
secure one ray Of light in the dark week Of
upper class festivity. That is at the GIee Club
concert. Here they take their revenge. and take
it with vengeance Some six hundred strong.
they take up their positions at the doors Of the
Hyperion Theatre on the evening OF the concert
and when the doors are open they flock in a
solid, fighting mass, to the peanut gallery
where they can at least eye the girls in the
seats below, and get themselves noticed for
three hours in whatever way they can most
conveniently arrange to do
Freshman purgatory," as prom week has
been called. starts in as soon as the first fair
guests of the upper class men arrive. A junior
friend will stampede into the freshman's room
with:
Here. Billy. my people are here. and you've
got TO lend me your chairs for this evening.
Thanks. Just stick them in my room in Farm
ham, will you?'
Or he is having a quiet pipe in his room in
ment the other fellows are having, when the
door opens and a senior enters. followed by a
party of people.
This is the rOom' says the senior. ignoring
the abashed freshman. who is hurriedly sling
ing his pipe under the window seat and putting
on his collar. Il lived here in sophomore year."
The freshman gazes after the retreating figures
cf the girls with the seniors. and if ne is the
kind that freshmen usually are. says something
audibIy
Or he is "boning" up Latin recitation with
a crowd of fellow sufferers when he is re-
quested by an upper class man 70 ''vacate''
My father. SO-and-SO. wants to look around a.
little in his old room" Whereupon the fresh
man withdraws with his discounted friends
into the hallway while the old gentleman pokes
behind the pictures with his find the
initials he cut in the wall forty years ago.
Often. too. when he is bemoanlng freshman
get peremptory summons from upper class
man in the room below to make less noise up
there. freshmen" He will stand these things
patiently for some time. but after a while he
tries to forget his misery by rolling barrels
down the iron staircase past some juniors
room, from which come the sounds OF feminine
laughter. He doesn't do that kind Of thing to
be disagreeable. but just becauSe-weH, because
he is freshman.
Teas "swells.' walks drives. germans and
the Prom succeed each other for the upper
class men. but the freshman is shouldered to
the wall For the juniors studies go by the
board. and the instructors lecture To classes
that are thinned down to mere half dozen OF
the original fifty men. But TO the freshman
there is no relief. Nothing Falls to his lot in
Prom week exce~t 10 look on. and he has no
excuse 20 cut" his classes. So he pays what
attention he can 10 the professors. --trOts'' his
ireek or Latin brazeniy and meets with others
II his Kind to exchange iIl-nature and the woes
u freshman kind
1t is at the Glee Club concert therefore that
he freshmen wreaks his revenge, and it is usu-
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