ALUMNI PARADES

Then come the alumni parades at Commencement.  The old timers head the procession; those who came first, are first in line, and so on down to the youngest and most recent graduate.

There are many interesting things in the parade, which bring out specific class peculiarities.  In one college you may see gray-haired men walking behind an immense Sacred Bird, as it is called.  This Bird—­the creation of an ingenious mind—­is the size of an ostrich and has all the semblance of life, with many lifelike tricks and habits.

Men dress in all sorts of costumes.  This is a day in which each class has some peculiar part, and all are united in the one big thought that it is a cherished college custom.

You may see some man with the letter of his college on his sweater, another may have his class numerals, another may wear a gold football.  These are not ordinary things to be purchased at sporting goods stores; they are a reward of merit.  The college custom has made it so, and if in some college town the traditions of the university are such that a man, as he passes the Ma Newell gateway at Cambridge raises his hat in honor of this great Harvard hero, it is a tradition backed up by a wonderful spirit of love towards one who has gone.  And then on Commencement Day when the seniors plant their class ivy—­that is a token to remain behind them and flourish long after they are out in the wide, wide world.

College tradition makes it possible for a poor boy to get an education.  The poor fellow may wait on the table, where sit many rich men’s sons, but they may be all chums with him; they are on the same footing; the campus of one is the campus of the other, and all you can say is “It is just the way of things—­just the way it must be.”  More power to the man who works his way through college.

It may be, as fellow college man, you are now recalling some custom that is carried out on a college street, in a dormitory, in a fraternity house, perhaps, or a club; perhaps in some boarding house, where you had your first introduction to a college custom; maybe in the cheapest rooming house in town you got your first impression of a bold, bad sophomore.  You probably could have given him a good trouncing had he been alone, and yet you were prepared to take smilingly the hazing imposed upon you.

Maybe some of you fondly recall a cannon stuck in the ground behind a historical building where once George Washington had his headquarters.  Around about this traditional monument cluster rich memories as you review the many college ceremonies enacted there.

Some of you, owing allegiance to a New England Alma Mater, may recall with smiles and perhaps mischievous satisfaction, the chequered career of the sculptured Sabrina in her various appearances and disappearances since the day, now long gone by, when in pedestaled repose she graced the college flower gardens.  The Sabrina tradition is one of the golden legacies of Amherst life.