but if you suffer from it, it is because you have not
basis, stamina; and probably you deserve be slighted. This, however,
is true only when people have become somewhat concentrated. Children
know nothing of it. They live chiefly from without, not from within.
Only gradually as they approach maturity do they cut loose from the
scaffolding, and depend upon their own centre of gravity. Appearances
are very strong in school. Money and prodigality have great weight
there, notwithstanding the democracy of attainments and abilities.
Have the students self-poise enough to refrain from these festive
expenses without suffering mortification? Have they virtue enough to
refrain from them with the certainty of incurring such suffering? Have
they nobility, and generosity, and largeness of soul enough, while
abstaining themselves for conscience' sake, to share in the plans, and
sympathize without servility in the pleasures of their rich comrades?
to look on with friendly interest, without cynicism or concealed
malice, at the preparations in which they do not join? Or do they
yield to selfishness, and gratify their own vanity, weakness,
self-indulgence, and love of pleasure, at whatever cost to their
parents? Or is there such a state of public opinion and usage in
College, that this custom is equally honored in the breach and in the
observance?

When the feasting was over, the most picturesque part of the day began.
The College green put off suddenly its antique gravity, and became

"Embrouded ..... as it were a mede
Alle ful of fresshe floures, white and rede,"

"floures" which to their gay hues and graceful outlines added the rare
charm of fluttering in perpetual motion. It was a kaleidoscope without
angles. To me, niched in the embrasure of an old upper window, the
scene, it seemed, might have stepped out of the Oriental splendor of
Arabian Nights. I never saw so many well-dressed people together in my
life before. That seems a rather tame fact to buttress Arabian Nights
withal, but it implies much. The distance was a little too great for
one to note personal and individual beauty; but since I have heard that
Boston is famous for its ugly women, perhaps that was an advantage, as
diminishing likewise individual ugliness. If no one was strikingly
handsome, no one was strikingly plain. And though you could not mark
the delicacies of faces, you could have the full effect of
costume,--rich, majestic, floating,