This, however, I do not purpose now to discuss further. Neither shall I speak of the second deficiency,—that of home influences,—any further than it is connected with the third, namely, a culpable neglect of circumstances which minister directly to character. I design to speak only of those evils which lie on the surface, patent to the most casual observer, and which may be removed without any change in the structure of society. And among the first of these I reckon the mean and meagre homes provided for the college students. If the State were poor, if the question were between mere rude shelter and no college education, we should do well to choose the former, and our choice would be our glory. It would be worthwhile even to live in such a house as Thoreau suggests, a tool-box with a few augur-holes bored in it to admit air, and a hook to hook down the lid at night. But we are not poor. Society has money enough to do everything it wishes to do; and it has provided no better homes for its young men because it has not come to the point of believing that better homes are necessary. Sometimes it affects to maintain that this way of living is beneficial, and talks of the disciplinary power of soldiers' fare. It is true that a soldier, living on a crust of bread and lying on the ground for love of country or of duty, is ennobled by it; but it is also true, that a miser doing the same things for love of stocks and gold is degraded; and a dreamer doing it serenely unconscious is neither ennobled nor degraded, but is simply laying the foundation for dyspepsia. To despise the elegances of life when they interfere with its duties the part of a hero. To be indifferent to them when they stand in the way of knowledge is the attribute of a philosopher. To disregard them when they would contribute to both character and culture is neither the one nor the other. It was very well to cultivate the muses on a little oatmeal, when resources were so scanty that a bequest of seven hundred and seventy-nine pounds seventeen shillings and two pence was a gift munificent enough to confer upon the donor the honor of giving his name to the College so endowed; when a tax of one peck of corn, or twelve pence a year, from each family was all could reasonably be levied for the maintenance of poor scholars at the College; when the Pilgrims—hardly escaped from persecution, and plunged into the midst of perils by Indian warfare, perils by frost and famine and disease, but filled with the love of liberty, and fired with the conviction that only fortified by learning could be a blessing—gave of their scanty stock and their warm hearts, one man his sheep, another his nine shillings' worth of cotton cloth, a third his pewter flagon, and so on down to the fruit-dish, the sugar-spoon, the silver-tipt jug, and the trencher-salt; but a generation that is not astonished when a man pays six thousand dollars for a few feet land to bury himself in, is without excuse in not providing for its sons a dignified and respectable home during the four years of their college life,—years generally when they are most susceptible of impressions, most impatient of restraints, most removed from society, and most need to be surrounded by every inducement to a courteous and Christian life. What was a large winded liberality then may be but niggardliness or narrowness now. If indeed there be a principle in the case, the principle that this arrangement is better adapted to a generous growth than a more ornate one, then let it be carried out. Let all public edifices and private houses be reduced to a scale of Spartan simplicity; let camel's-hair and leathern girdles take the place of broadcloth, and meat be locusts and wild honey. But so long as treasures of art and treasures of wealth are lavished on churches, and courthouses, and capitols, and private dwellings, so long as earth and sea are forced to give up the riches which are in them for the adornment of the person and the enjoyment of the palate, we cannot consistently bring forward either principles or practice to defend our neglect withal. If the experiment of a rough and primitive life is to be tried, let it be tried at home, where community of interests, and diversity of tastes, and the refinements of family and social life, will prevent it from degenerating into a fatal failure; but do not let a horde of boys colonize in a base and shabby dwelling, unless you are willing to admit the corollary that they may to that extent become base and shabby. If they do become so they are scarcely blameworthy; if they do not, it is no thanks to the system, but because other causes come in to deflect its conclusions. But why set down a weight at one end of the lever because there is a power at the other? Why not wait until, in the natural course of things, lever comes to an obstacle, and then let power bear down with all its might to remove it?
Doubtless those who look back upon their college days through the luminous mist of years, see no gray walls or rough floors, and count it only less than sacrilege to find spot or wrinkle or any such thing on the garments of their alma mater. But awful is the gift of the gods that we can become used to things; awful, since, by becoming used to them, we become insensible to their faults and tolerant of their defects. Harvard is beloved of her sons: would she be any less beloved if she were also beautiful to outside barbarians? Would her fame be less fair, or her name less dear, if those who come up to her solemn feasts, filled the idea of her greatness, could not only tell her towers, but consider her palaces, without being forced to bury their admiration and reverence under the first threshold which they cross? O, be sure the true princess is not yet found, for king's daughter is all glorious within.
Deficiency takes shelter under antiquity and associations: associations may, indeed, festoon unlovely places, but would they cluster any less richly around walls that were stately and adequate? Is it not fitter that associations should adorn, than that they should conceal? If here and there a relic of the olden time is cherished because it is olden,—a house, a book, a dress,—shall we then live only in the houses, read only the books, and wear the dresses of our ancestors? If here and there some ship has breasted the billows of time, and sails the seas today because of its own inherent grace and strength, shall we, therefore, cling to crazy old crafts that can with difficulty be towed out of harbor, and must be kept afloat by constant application of tar and oakum? As I read the Bible and the world, gray hairs are a crown unto a man only when they are found in the way of righteousness. Laden with guilt and heavy woes, behold the AGED SINNER goes. A seemly old age is fair and beautiful, and to be had in honor by all people; but an old age squalid and pinched is of all things most pitiful.
After the Oration and Poem, which, having nothing distinctive, I pass over, comes the "Collation." The members of the Senior Class prepare a banquet,—sometimes separately and sometimes in clubs, at an expense ranging from fifty to five hundred dollars,—to which they invite as many friends as they choose, or as are available. The banquet is quite as rich, varied, and elegant as you find at evening parties, and the occasion is a merry and pleasant one. But it occurred to me that there may be unpleasant things connected with this custom. In a class of seventy-five, in a country like America, it is probable that a certain proportion are ill able to meet the expense which such custom necessitates. Some have fought their own way through college. Some must have been fought through by their parents. To them I should think this elaborate and considerable outlay must be a very sensible inconvenience. The mere expense of books and board, tuition and clothing, cannot be met without strict economy, and much parental and family sacrifice. And at the end of it all, when every nerve has been strained, and must be strained harder still before the man can be considered fairly on his feet and able to run his own race in life, comes this new call for entirely uncollegiate disbursements. Of course it is only a custom. There is no college by-law, I suppose, which prescribes a valedictory SYMPOSIUM. Probably it grew up gradually from small ice-cream beginnings to its present formidable proportions; but a custom is as rigid as a chain. I wondered whether the moral character of the young men was generally strong enough, by the time they were in their fourth collegiate year, to enable them to go counter to the custom, if it involved personal sacrifice at home,—whether there was generally sufficient courtliness, not to say Christianity, in the class,—whether there was sufficient courtesy, chivalry, high-breeding,—to make the omission of this party-giving unnoticeable, or not unpleasant. I by no means say, that the inability of a portion of the students to entertain their friends sumptuously should prevent those who are able from doing so. As the world is, some will be rich and some will be poor. This is a fact which they have to face the moment they go out into the world; and the sooner they grapple with it, and find out its real bearings and worth, or worthlessness, the better. Boys are usually old enough by the time they are graduated to understand and take philosophically such a distinction. Nor do I admit that poor people have any right to be sore on the subject of their poverty. The one sensitiveness which I cannot comprehend, with which I have no sympathy, for which I have no pity, and of which I have no tolerance, is sensitiveness about poverty. It is an essentially vulgar feeling. I cannot conceive how a man who has any real elevation of character, any self-respect, can for a moment experience so ignoble a shame. One may be annoyed at the inconveniences, and impatient of the restraints of poverty; but to be ashamed to be called poor or to be thought poor, to resort to shifts, not for the sake of being comfortable or elegant, but of seeming to be above the necessity of shifts, is an indication of an inferior mind, whether it dwell in prince or in peasant. The man who does it shows that he has not in his own opinion character enough to stand alone. He must be supported by adventitious circumstances, or he must fall. Nobody, therefore, need ever expect to receive sympathy from me in recounting the social pangs or slights of poverty. You never can be slighted, if you do not slight yourself. People may attempt to do it, but their shafts have no barb. You turn it all into natural history. It is a psychological phenomenon, a study, something to be analyzed, classified, reasoned from, and bent to your own convenience, but not to be taken to heart. It amuses you; it interests you; it adds to your stock of facts; it makes life curious and valuable: but if you suffer from it, it is because you have not basis, stamina; and probably you deserve be slighted. This, however, is true only when people have become somewhat concentrated. Children know nothing of it. They live chiefly from without, not from within. Only gradually as they approach maturity do they cut loose from the scaffolding, and depend upon their own centre of gravity. Appearances are very strong in school. Money and prodigality have great weight there, notwithstanding the democracy of attainments and abilities. Have the students self-poise enough to refrain from these festive expenses without suffering mortification? Have they virtue enough to refrain from them with the certainty of incurring such suffering? Have they nobility, and generosity, and largeness of soul enough, while abstaining themselves for conscience' sake, to share in the plans, and sympathize without servility in the pleasures of their rich comrades? to look on with friendly interest, without cynicism or concealed malice, at the preparations in which they do not join? Or do they yield to selfishness, and gratify their own vanity, weakness, self-indulgence, and love of pleasure, at whatever cost to their parents? Or is there such a state of public opinion and usage in College, that this custom is equally honored in the breach and in the observance?
When the feasting was over, the most picturesque part of the day began. The College green put off suddenly its antique gravity, and became
"Embrouded ..... as it were a mede
Alle ful of fresshe floures, white and rede,"
"floures" which to their gay hues and graceful outlines added the rare charm of fluttering in perpetual motion. It was a kaleidoscope without angles. To me, niched in the embrasure of an old upper window, the scene, it seemed, might have stepped out of the Oriental splendor of Arabian Nights. I never saw so many well-dressed people together in my life before. That seems a rather tame fact to buttress Arabian Nights withal, but it implies much. The distance was a little too great for one to note personal and individual beauty; but since I have heard that Boston is famous for its ugly women, perhaps that was an advantage, as diminishing likewise individual ugliness. If no one was strikingly handsome, no one was strikingly plain. And though you could not mark the delicacies of faces, you could have the full effect of costume,—rich, majestic, floating, gossamery, impalpable. Everything was fresh, spotless, and in tune. It scarcely needed music to resolve all the incessant waver and shimmer into a dance; but the music came, and, like sand-grains under the magnet, the beautiful atoms swept into stately shapes and tremulous measured activity,—
"A fine, sweet earthquake gently moved
By the soft wind of whispering silks."
Then it seemed like a German festival, and came back to me the Fatherland, the lovely season of the Blossoming, the short, sweet bliss-month among the Blumenbuhl Mountains.
Nothing call be more appropriate, more harmonious, than dancing on the green. Youth, and gaiety, and beauty—and in summer we are all young, and gay, and beautiful—mingle well with the eternal youth of blue sky, and velvet sward, and the light breezes toying in the treetops. Youth and Nature kiss each other in the bright, clear purity of the happy summer-tide. Whatever objections lie against dancing elsewhere must veil their faces there.