A ROMANCE OF JARVIS.

SHIPKINS, '83, is in love. He has repeatedly assured his friends of the fact, and, when he heard of the Spring Athletics, he felt that the chance had come to display his nine-month College culture to his charmer. Accordingly, after carefully studying a Sophomore's notes on Rhetoric lectures, he sent her a nicely written postal inviting her and another young lady (whom he generously purposed to bestow on his chum) to come to Cambridge and witness the sports.

The day arrived, and the exulting Shipkins, in company with his chum, set out for the city to meet the fair ones. Now, whether he was too flurried to calculate aright the time of the train's arrival, or was unduly long putting the finishing touches to his toilet, will ever be a matter of doubt; but that he blundered somewhere and, as a consequence, failed to connect, there can be no doubt, for, when he reached the depot, he found that the train had come and was gone, and that his lady friends had gone too. When Shipkins realized the situation, he was terribly distressed, and persisted in declaring that he was all undone. His chum, however, rose to the emergency, and, after some arguments going to prove that if you can't get what you want you had better take what you can get, revealed to our poor Freshman the fact that there were a couple of amiable cousins of his in town, who would be only too willing to take the places of the missing maidens. At this the ill-fated Shipkins brightened up a little, and, to make a long story short, was seated on Jarvis, within an hour, holding a sunshade over one of them.

Thus he was engaged, doing the agreeable, and was flattering himself that he was becoming a genuine "Little-Tin-God," when, to his unspeakable horror, what did he see but his own true-love, with her friend and an upper classman, whom he recognized as a relative of the latter, entering the field and taking a seat on a neighboring bench. Shipkins could have met annihilation with calm satisfaction, but to meet her, - her whom he had invited and then failed to meet, and for her to see him with another, - it was too much.

But now she does see him, and recognizes him with looks of unspeakable disdain. He cannot bear it longer, but dropping the sunshade he was holding, he rushes from the field without a word.

Shipkins had taken a "warning" without a quaim; he had unflinchingly forced questionable petitions through the "Registerium;" but when he encountered his angered charmer after the sports, his utmost fortitude failed him. He tried to make amends for his conduct, but tried in vain; and as he went his way, a dropped man, there kept running through his head a couplet of an old song, -

" 'Tis best to be off wi' the old love

Before ye be on wi' the new."

(Fact.)