Green Pastures

There is one conception that we would like to deflate before we up stakes over the interlude, a conception voiced by De Musset to the effect that "tout aux tavernes est au fait." Broadly, the phrase suggests that anything goes at a public house, or colloquially, an hotel.

There will be many wearers of the Green off to hotels this vacation. Hotels in Montreal, in New York, in Bermuda, in Boston, in Florida, and in Pinehurst. They will find in many of these centers of American culture and criticism an unvoiced assumption that the generic Dartmouth gentleman is a roguish, rakish, hell-bent-for-affection sort of fellow with all the manly virtues and not a few of the more virile peculation's that go to make up the finished citizen of the world. This axiom means a lot to us. There is a pleasure in it that emanates only from undeserved praise.

We are gleefully conscious that the undergraduates of certain gentlemanly institutions hereabout have a reputation for being sedate and sedative in the presence of the fair, and for being given to pinks in oolong and underlinen. We are inwardly gratified that we are reputed to be rough in our ways, ready with our blandishments, and resolute in our pursuit of happiness and its appurtenances. Neither estimate errs on the side of verity, but to deny that we appreciate both would be to stretch the truth still further.

Nothing is less susceptible to scrutiny than reputation. Put to the test, the savoir faire, savoir dire of the hardiest drollo in our midst would be hard put to it to approach this standard of imperfection. We can't attempt to be Casanovas without certain detection. And once let the folk of the watering-places get wind of our being neither more nor less than pretty average fellows whose urges are no more picaresque than the norm, we sink in the eyes of the world.

Our only hope is to be ourselves and circulate the impression that we have put on the pretense of being gentlemen from sheer surfeit with the things of this world. After all, we owe it to coming generations of Dartmouth men to preserve the world's illusion concerning them. We must save them their birthright. We can't eat a mess of pottage and have it too. The Dartmouth.