NAUGHTY NOMENCLATURE

Placed wisely, perhaps, in a period of little activity, is the peculiar burden imposed at this time on inventive members of the Junior Class, and their less witty and more unfortunate mates. It is a task that takes little time in execution, it is true, but being a unique and significant event in the educational molding of a man, it deserves and demands long hours of cerebration. For it is often the one time that any literary production of the author appears in print. It is the single monument of his pictorial career, and on this attempt he triumphs or fails. Indeed, rarely does a mother who has been disappointed in the sex of her first born experience such difficulties in naming her child as the chairman of groups applying for senior dormitories in devising a witty psuedonym.

The possibilities are as endless as the pains which should accompany the choice. Most obvious are the names of historic characters, titles of books, or the heroes of one's favorite comic strip. Better are literary allusions or foreign quotations. But really the best are those that pun gently, or carry hidden some delicate and awful meaning. Choice examples of this from other years are "Titus A. Drum" for example, or "Lewd Fellows of a Basser Sort", "Twelve Knights in a Bathroom", or "Virginibus Puerisque."

But do not let these attempts dishearten. Set the mark higher, and ring the bell. For really, if a man, after three years study, cannot compose a clever theme of five words or less, the critics of higher education are to some extent justified.

Moreover trade and ugly commercialism so tainted the significance of the number twelve that the references to it in history and literature are, literally, numbered.