n me: while, if they are right, they
may serve as a nail or two to be fastened by the masters of assemblies.

The funny part of Class-Day comes last,--not so very funny to tell, but
amazingly funny to see,--only a wreath of bouquets fastened around the
trunk of an old tree, perhaps eight or ten feet from the ground, and
then the four classes range themselves around it in four circles with
their hands fast locked together, the Freshman Class on the outside, the
Senior Class within, grotesquely tricked out in vile old coats and
"shocking bad hats." Then the two alternate classes go one way around
the tree and the two others the opposite, pell-mell, harum-scarum,
pushing and pulling, down and up again, only keeping fast hold of hands,
singing, shouting, cheering _ad libitum_, _ad throatum_, (theirs,) _ad
earsum_, (ours,) and going all the time in that din and yell and crowd
and crash dear to the hearts of boys. At a given signal there is a
pause, and the Senior Class make sudden charge upon the bouquets,
huddling and hustling and crowding and jumping at the foot of the old
tree; bubbling up on each other's shoulders into momentary prominence
and prospect of success, and immediately disappearing ignominiously;
making frantic grasps and clutches with a hundred long arms and eager
outstretched hands, and finally succeeding, by shoulders and fists, in
bringing the wreath away piecemeal; and then they give themselves up to
mutual embraces, groans, laments, and all the enginery of pathetic
affection in the last gasping throes of separation,--to the doleful
tearing of hair and the rending of their fantastic garments. It is the
personification of legalized rowdyism; and if young men would but
confine themselves to such rowdyism as may be looked at and laughed at
by their mothers and sisters, they would find life just as amusing and a
thousand times more pure and profitable.

* * * * *

It occurs to me here that there is one subject on which I desire to
"give my views," though it is quite unconnected with Class-Day. But it
is probable that in the whole course of my natural life it will never
again happen to me to be writing about colleges, so I desire to say in
this paper everything I have to say on the subject. I refer to the
practice of "hazing," which is an abomination. If we should find it
among hinds, a remnant of the barbarisms of the Dark Ages, blindly
handed down by such slow-growing people