THE REJUVENESCENCE OF THE MAGI

It is a custom of staid old age, when wearied with a continuous state of staidness, to cast aside its robes of wisdom and revel in the joyous disregard of youth. Ordinarily such unexpected return to the age of folly is diagnosed as second childhood, but when indulged in by Seniors, those omniscient swayers of destiny, it is called the Senior Spread.

This evening, at eight bells of the second dog watch, when the sleep of oblivion is beginning to creep over the rural districts and, by tradition, the Freshman Dormitories, and when the subway-to-Park is just beginning to awake, the sparse but never sad remnants of 1917 will gather from Hollis, from Holworthy, and the furthest confines of West Newton for that annual festival wherein Seniors have attempted since immemorial years to forget, if such a thing were possible, that they are wise.

In the Delta, so named because, like the Nile, it suffers a yearly spring overflow, where, from his brazen seat, John Harvard frowns down at these roystering children of a frivolous generation, the banquet boards of 1917's hospitality will rest. And in Memorial Hall the ingrained odor of cabbage and beef from ten thousand dinners will be temporarily smothered under the fragrance of rose-water and culled flowers.

The musicians have been summoned, the ginger ale has been ordered, and the partners for the dance, those divine houris who surpass in entrancement, pulchritude and loveliness all the beauties of past or succeeding ages, have been asked and have accepted. The trilogy which is famed for bringing the highest joy to man is thus assured. What more, when is added the ambrosia of the Spread menu, might be asked for a Roman banquet?

The Seniors, to the last man, in ponderous exuberance at their celebration, have unwrapped their flannel trousers from the mothballs in which they have rested from the Freshman Jubilee in '14, and have practised the strange new dance steps which have come in since the polka and the two-step went out of fashion. They do not say much, but from veiled boasts it is to inferred that they expect to show these youngsters of '18 and '19 a thing or two about how to celebrate in real fashion. The senorial gown has been thrown aside, and these mages of all learning are young again.

Our society reporter has not yet compiled the list of notables who will be present. But it is to be expected that not least among the guests will be the weather-maker, with that bad Indian, Rain-in-the-Face.

It is unnecessary to say that all night, or a fair part of it, the flute, bassoon will be respectively piped and strummed. 1917 does not celebrate often, but when it does it celebrates a great deal. Curfew shall not ring tonight.