FACT AND FESTIVITY

The four years are over, the gaunt spectre of divisionals has been met and, in most cases, thrust aside, and now for a brief week, the Senior sits high with the world at his feet: With the Baccalaureate Service tomorrow in Appleton Chapel opens a round of ceremonies, gay and solemn alike, calculated to send the graduate out from the University with a memory of a short hour of triumph to cap the remembrances of four years of struggles as an undergraduate.

A college Commencement is rightly an occasion for festival jollity, and Seniors will make the most of Memorial Hall Monday night and the confetti warfare in the Stadium on Tuesday. But this passes, and the emotion of the average capped-and-gowned candidate at the Commencement exercises will partake more of the serious than of the lightsome. Harvard College has given of its best to these men. Whatever they had she has given them again an hundredfold. To a greater or a lesser degree they have begun to grow up. At the moment of departure there may be in the heart of the man who leaves the College doubt of his own power, even among the manifestations of trust and the symbols of early success. Conquest of this doubt and proof of power lies in a future of uncertainty and difficulty.

Late in June cartoonists and feature writers of metropolitan newspapers enjoy a field day at the expense of the hosts of bearers of diplomas which step forth into the world. Such levity is inevitable, but it should not, and it does not, impair the delirium of the last week of a college career. It is the Seniors hour, and none should approach to mar the glory whose memory will remain ever bright.