Seniors write down the results of two years' study in the Biennial
Examination--make up the incongruous whole of the college proper.

Such is the place where, about the middle of September, if you have been
sojourning through the very quiet vacation in one of the almost deserted
hotels of New-Haven, you will begin to be conscious of an awakening from
the six weeks' torpor, (the _long_ vacation of hurried Americans who
must study forty weeks of the year.) Along the extended row of brick you
will begin to discern aproned 'sweeps' clearing the month and a half's
accumulated rubbish from the walks, beating carpets on the grass-plots,
re-lining with new fire-brick the sheet-iron cylinder-stoves, more
famous for their eminent Professor improver (may his shadow never be
less!) than for their heating qualities, or furbishing old furniture
purchased at incredibly low prices, of the last class, to make good as
new for the Freshmen, periphrastically known as 'the young gentlemen who
have lately entered college.' It may be, too, that your practiced eye
will detect one of these fearful youths, who, coming from a thousand
miles in the interior--from the prairies of the West or the bayous of
the South--has arrived before his time, and now, blushing unseen, is
reconnoitering the intellectual fortress which he hopes soon to storm
with 'small Latin and less Greek,' or, perchance, remembering with sad
face the distance of his old home and the strangeness of the new. A few
days more, and hackmen drive down Chapel street hopefully, and return
with trunks and carpet-bags outside and diversified specimens of
student-humanity within--a Freshman, in spite of his efforts, showing
that his as yet undeveloped character is '_summa integritate et
innocentia_;' a Sophomore, somewhat flashy and bad-hatted, a _hard_
student in the worse sense, with much of the '_fortiter in re_' in his
bearing; a Junior, exhibiting the antithetical '_suaviter in modo_;' a
Senior, whose '_otium cum dignitate_' at once distinguishes him from the
vulgar herd of common mortals. Then succeed hearty greetings of meeting
friends, great purchase of text-books, and much changing of rooms;
students being migratory by nature, and stimulated thereto by the
prospect of choice of better rooms conceded to advanced academical
standing. In which state of things the various employes of college,
including the trusty colored Aquarius, facetiously denominated Professor
_Paley_, under the e