MENSA, MENSAE

The vocabulary and conversational prowess of the Classical Club has been tested to the utmost at yesterday's dinner in Leverett House where only Latin was spoken. Hardly since the banqueting days of Trimalchio has such mealtime abandonment to the Latin tongue been reported; for even the medieval monks sandwiched in bits of contemporary jargon over their Benedictine. But at Leverett House, the only digression into the dialect of the Northern Barbarian Tribes was heard when food was ordered from the bewildered maids.

There is no denying the value of the French and German tables at the Union. Indeed, French dinner conversation, with a man presiding to direct the talk and keep it moving, can give the sympathetic student a splendid feeling for the living language and the French turn of mind. But it seems hardly possible that even the incredible virtuosity of Professor Rand in speaking Latin could make last night's Classical Club dinner more than an interesting tour-de-force. The reading of Latin poets is a worth-while and illuminating experience; conversational toying with gerundives is hardly interpretive of the Roman spirit. Leverett Latin would have given any Roman a good laugh. Latin is a dead Language; as such it lends itself to appreciative study but not to creative composition.