ptation, I suppose, is much stronger, as the stake is
larger. Have they 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 think I may safely say 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 costumes,--rich, majestic, floating, gossamery,
impalpable. Everything was fresh, spotless, and in tune. It scarcely
needed music to resolve all the incessant waver and shimmer into a
dance; but the music came, and, like sand-grains under the magnet, the
beautiful atoms swept into stately shapes and tremulous measured
activity,--

"A fine, sweet earthquake gently moved
By the soft wind of whispering silks."

Then it seemed like a German festival, and c