Weekly Yard Punch: Two Dogs Play the Game Admirably Well

Gatsby would never have approved.

The weather was middling clammy, the melted-lollipop purple punch was sabotaged. The talk was banalities in at least three languages.

But despite it all there were some 400 studenty looking people at the Summer School punch Wednesday in the Yard. Some of them stayed for more than two-hours.

Once two dogs, a big one and a small one, began to nuzzle each other in sight of everyone. "Stop that," someone yelled. Then from the crowd: "Don't bother--they're doing what we came to do."

The rest of the afternoon was a ritual dance.

There were turbaned elders hobnobbing with the transistor-toting set, and fully half of the girls were slathered with tinct pastes. Several had managed, by artful application, to conceal their lips; others made it appear that they were born with azure eyelids.

The footwear spanned a parcel of centuries, including everything from around-the-ankle-up-the-calf Roman sandles to two-buckle black motorcycle boots.

Some were distressed by the traces of pastoral serenity. "If it were Penn. State, it would be beer on the table," said one collegian with a large paunch. A girl ventured that "They should play silly games at punches." She was admirably built to play silly games.

After an hour of swishing back and forth through the crowd, small groups settled in the grass close to the steps of Widener, stalks broken by the wind. One group was a choir of southern accents; to an ear usually stung by New England dipthongs, it was like hearing a debate between very courteous, very distant train whistles.

There was one group of recent college graduates who looked on with a proper detachment, though not without an admixture of lust. "Many fine women," one of them said.

Animal images kept wriggling into the conversation, as when one boy suggested the place was "full of free beef," Another, whose sartorial splendor was soiled by an unsightly sweat stain, muttered, "Zoo."

Why did they come? A girl all flaxon haired commented to her friend in smooth tones that left a vapour-trail of sophistication--meanwhile throwing a partly used ice cream cone down before her--"I don't normally come to these meat markets, but I was thirsty."