DOMUM.

THE Yard has looked pleasant for the past few days; even gloomy old University wears a more cheerful aspect. Steps are lighter and faces more bright, except perhaps the pallid faces of Freshmen who are on their way to the examination-room. There they will become oblivious to everything but the proctors, while they scribble the accumulated lore of a night's grind or a crib upon the pages of the well-named blue-book; and when the last of those tragedies - or farces, if you will - is over, they, too, will be as merry as the rest of us.

Don't trust that blase old Senior, when he says that the holidays no longer have their pristine charms for him. Believe it, the most pessimistic of us all is secretly muttering, - if he has not forgotten all his Latin, - "O domus, nunc te respiciam!"

There is an indescribable pleasure in being appreciated, and we are always a bienvenu at home. Nobody there knows that we are a humbug, or, if anybody does, he never says so. But, after all, the pleasure of a trip home is not wholly unalloyed.

Tom is a returning prodigal. He wonders if the old prodigal in the parable would have been pardoned quite as readily if he had been attended by a retinue of unpaid bills. Dick, likewise, is as sad as twilight. He took a hand with Dan Cupid last summer, and won. Ah! you conceited fellow, you are thinking that Rose is not quite worthy of you, and that you might have done better, after all. But you must make her a present, ex officio. We sympathize - with Rose.

We sympathize, too, with the man who knows that on Christmas night there will be a scraggly pine-tree in the parlor, and a gathering of the haut ton there in honor of his arrival. He will have to talk poetry with his aunt, and Greek with the clergyman. But "neque tu choreas sperne, puer," and leave the clergyman to learn from mamma how hard you have studied; she will make out a much better case than yourself, we assure you.

Have you never noticed how ingeniously a mother will hide the defects of her son? That Augustus is as stupid as an owl is apparent to everybody; but his mother is continually prating about her dear boy's love of study. Harry is a bon-vivant at Harvard; he is continually giving dinners; he has a little box at the Globe, and a big bill at Ober's; but you shall hear the fond mother say, "Poor Harry is applying himself too much; he has come home quite pale, and we are afraid of a brain-fever."

The happy man is the homeward-bound Freshman. He will carry that green worsted bag, emblazoned with his initials, - which might as well be Hannibal's, for nobody can decipher them, - and a very little bag, containing his toothbrush. He will walk through the train twice. He knows every one will see that he is a collegian; but he forgets that every one will see what is equally obvious, - that he is a Freshman. We pardon him, for we confess to a slight thrill of pride when first a mucker called out after us, "Hi! look at the Harvard man!"

The Freshman's whole trip will be one triumphal journey, which will culminate only when he alights from his carriage to fall into the arms of those goddesses, his sisters. Such a welcome! Why, there will have been nothing like it since Orpheus was torn to pieces by those Thracian ladies, long ago. You shall hear him say at dinner that he went to the punch just to look on. On the same evening he will tell the boys that he was full of Bacchus; and then he will wake the midnight echoes of the quiet old town, to show them "how we men do it at the University." But don't imagine that even his happiness is complete. He is worrying to-day about the best way of breaking to his mother the fact that he has learned to smoke.

The bell for our last recitation is ringing; a few hours more, and we shall all be on our way domum. We shall come back full of good resolutions, but full of conceit; and it will take a deal of snubbing and many a chapter of "Vanity Fair" to get us into a healthful state again.

ION.