PARADISE LOST

One of the things which makes the memory of University days precious to alumni is the recollection of the host of customs and traditions by which their undergraduate days were ruled. Like the Hand of Death and the Laws of the Medes and Persians, they were steadfast, unmovable, always present to remind the newcomer of the whims and fancies of his predecessors, and to serve as a connecting link between the young generation and the old. When a tradition is broken or a custom allowed to fall into disuse, something very close to the spirit of the college is taken away.

Unlike most other universities, Harvard has few traditions; aside from the Reinhardt legend, the wearing of old hats, and Professor Copeland, the university's stock of folk-lore is extremely limited--except, of course, for the studied cultivation of Indifference. This apparent barrenness of background, however, does not prevent a certain sympathy for other universities in their occasional bereavements.

In the heartless action of a New Jersey Borough Council, Princeton has suffered a loss which her sons must feel very keenly. For years past it has been the undergraduate custom to smoke in both the local moving picture houses during the progress of the evening's entertainment. This seems a slight thing, and is a measure which has often been urged by patrons of the more popular resorts along Washington Street in Boston. When in addition it is something which has been done by one's forbears time out of mind, or at least since the invention of the cinema, the practice acquires the sacred significance of a religious festival. It is the solace of the underclassman and the graduate student after a fatiguing day in the library or the laboratory; and "without doubt," as the New York Times suggests, "there are those professors and dignitaries of the university who find great enjoyment in puffing away the hours in the dark corners of the theatre."

Now all this must vanish into the limbo of forgotten rites. The conviction of the Princeton Borough Council that where there is smoke there must sooner or later be fire is undeniably sound; insurance companies will breathe more freely, and so, one imagines, will the laboring pianist who plays the Wedding March during the death of the heroine. But for those children of Old Nassau--past, present, and future--for whom the rolling smoke cloud has been both a memory and a promise, the edict means the snapping of one more link in the connecting chain.