The Vassar Girl at College.

Even Vassar does not escape the enterprising newspaper man, and it is to him that we owe this tale of a few of the customs of that charming spot. Why does not Vassar become co-educational?

"Vassar girls have a peculiar phraseology of their own, as I noticed when I went to their annual "Phil" on Friday evening by invitation of a tempting "cousin." In addition to the ordinary slang of girlhood, their vocabulary is still further extended. I gazed wonderingly and rather vacuously perhaps when my cousin said: "Look at that cow. What do you think of its lace?" I could not see any cow, but only an extremely pretty girl with some transparent, interwoven. fluffy stuff around her neck. Later I found that in the Vassar girl's classification all males are "men," and all females "cows," with the usual intensive adjectives strung before.

Notwithstanding her talkative independence, the Vassar girl always belongs to some boys' college in soul. Secretly she envies her brother or her chum's brother. It is wonderful how many "brothers" they have. Before the Thanksgiving foot ball game between Yale and Princeton they were divided up into factions as they were on national politics. They flaunted up and down the corridors with the barber's pole of Princeton's orange and black or the blue of Yale conspicuously displayed. The majority wore the blue, not so much for male reasons as because it was more becoming and easier to get. Harvard also is a great favorite with the girls, but not so many of them have waltzed with a real Harvard student, and Yale and Princeton are ahead. West Point, though, is away up in front. No civilian, no matter how darling his mustache and wavy its silken ends, can compare with the roughly shaved cadet; the bell button, with its imaginative tinkling and figurative heart shape, outweighs it all.

Vassar girls have a little custom which pleases the youths who are allowed to drop in at occasional receptions, but which is rather hard on the pantry stock of the institution. The spoons. I noticed. when I took lunch at the college yesterday afternoon, were stamped deeply "Vassar Female College." I saw several youths take two or three spoons; and one Princeton man, under the encouraging smile of his "cow," slipped spoon after spoon to the inside pocket of his coat. Quite an extensive barter trade is carried on between West Point and Poughkeepsie-spoons for bell buttons. I could not resist, and took one myself.