There were many of the relatives of the students present, and often they stood out in sharp contrast with the decorations and with the joy of the young people. Beautiful girls might be seen leading bent and wrinkled fathers and mothers, who had sacrificed all for them. Rose wished for her father, and passionately desired to do something for him. He had written that he couldn't leave the farm, and so she wandered about with others, like herself, free. Everywhere the young men met her. She never escaped them for a moment, their pursuit was relentless.
The crowd swarmed into each room, where the professors stood beside show-cases, polite and patient, exhibiting machines, specimens, drawings. At another place sherbet was served to the guests, and music could be heard in the lower halls. Everywhere was the lisp of feet, the ripple of talk.
All this was a bore to many of the pupils, for there was the peace-pipe ceremonial preparing on the campus, that they really waited for. Mysteriously in the deep dusk a huge heap of combustibles had been piled up on the wet grass, and one by one the two classes began to gather. There was a mutter of voices, a command, then a red flame flashed out, and with it the college yell soared up from a little bunch of dark forms:
"RAH-RAH-RAH-WISCONSIN!"
The stragglers on the walks turned toward the fire, like insects. They came in crawling dark lines like ants, across the wet grass. They formed a blue-black mass, lighted on one side by the orange light of the bonfire. The stars overhead grew green and dim in the light of the fire, and the encircling trees of the campus came out like silhouettes of purple-green cardboard.
The class rolled out its carpet for the girls and opened its boxes of long clay pipes. It seemed so much more important to Rose now that she stood there in the center as one of the graduating class. There was not much talk. They lined up and sang song after song. Then the boys moved about and showed the girls how to light their pipes.
"You want to suck, not blow, on it!" a voice called out, and everybody laughed dutifully. For a few moments all was laughter. The girls tried to assume the airs of smokers, and puffed their kinnikinnick furiously. Then as they sang they swung their pipes with rakish air,—"There is a Tavern in our Town" and "The Bull-frog in the Pool," and their voices floated out and up into the wreathing smoke of the fire, as deliciously sweet as though their songs were hymns of praise as they were hymns of youth.
The pipes needed constant relighting. In every silence some girl cried out: "O, my pipe's gone out!" One cried: "Give me a bite!" as if the pipe-stem were taffy.
To Rose the whole ceremony was glorious. It carried her out of herself. It gave her a glimpse into the world which men keep to themselves, and, besides, she had written the speech handing the pipe down to the custodian of the succeeding class, a really admirable ceremony.
Here on this spot the red men warred and loved. Here, with the sheen of lakes about, and the wild grass under their feet, it was beautiful and appropriate that they should be remembered by these young western sons and daughters of the white man.