inquimus tres menses.'

The wild, grotesque hilarity of those midnight songs can never be
forgotten. Then come poem and funeral oration, interspersed with songs,
and music by the band--'Old Grimes is dead,' 'Music from the Spheres,'
and other equally solemn and rare productions. Then are torches lighted,
and two by two the long train of torch-bearers defiles through the
silent midnight streets to the sound of solemn music, and passing by the
dark cemetery of the real dead, bear through 'Tutor's Lane' the coffin
of their mathematical ancestor. They climb the hill beyond, and commit
him to the flames, invoking Pluto, in Latin prayer, and chanting a final
dirge, while the flare of torches, the fearful grotesqueness of each
uncouth disguised wight, and the dark background of the encircling
forest, make the wild mirth almost solemn.

So ends the fun of the closing year; and with the exception of the
various excitements of burlesque debate on Thanksgiving eve, when the
smallest Freshman in either Society is elected President _pro tempore;_
of the _noctes ambrosianae_ of the secret societies; of appointments,
prize essays, and the periodical issue of the _Yale Literary_, now a
venerable periodical of twenty years' standing; the severe drill of
college study finds little relaxation during the winter months. Three
recitations or lectures each day, a review each day of the last lesson,
review of and examination on each term's study, with two biennial
examinations during the four years' course, require great diligence to
excel, and considerable industry to keep above water. But with the
returning spring the unused walks again are paced, and the dry keels
launched into the vernal waters. Again, in the warm twilight of evening,
you hear the laugh and song go up under the wide-spreading elms. Now,
too, comes the Exhibition of the Wooden Spoon, where the low-appointment
men burlesque the staid performances of college, and present the lowest
scholar on the appointment-list with an immense spoon, handsomely carved
from rosewood, and engraved with the convivial motto: '_Dum vivimus
vivamus_.'

Then, too, come those summer days upon the harbor, when the fleet
club-boats, and their stalwart crews, like those of Alcinous,

[Greek: 'kouroi anarriptein ala pedo,']

in their showy uniforms, push out from Ryker's; some bound upward past
the oyster-beds of Fair Haven, away up among the salt-marsh meadows,
where the Quinnipiac wanders unde