On a hot morning such as comes in May, a veteran fly of the year before buzzed about the dim window of the sick-room and banged against the half-closed shutters.  Half-conscious of the sound the boy’s father read near it, when another sound made his pulse jump.

“Chase him out,” came from the bed in a weak, cheerful voice.  “Don’t want any more things shut up for a spell.”

An hour later the older man stood over the boy.  “Do you know your next job, Johnny?” he said.  “You’ve got to get well in three weeks.  Your triennial in New Haven is then.”

“Holy—­mackerel!” exploded the feeble tones.  “All right, Henry, I’ll do it.”

* * *

Somewhere in the last days of June, New England is at its loveliest and it is commencement time at Yale.  Under the tall elms stretch the shady streets, alive eternally with the ever-new youth of ever-coming hundreds of boys.  But at commencement the pleasant, drowsy ways take on an astonishing character; it is as if the little city had gone joyfully mad.  Hordes of men of all ages, in startling clothes, appear in all quarters.  Under Phelps Gate-way one meets pirates with long hair, with ear-rings, with red sashes; crossing the campus comes a band of Highlanders, in front of the New Haven House are stray Dutchmen and Japanese and Punchinellos and other flotsam not expected in a decorous town; down College Street a group of men in gowns of white swing away through the dappled shadows.

The atmosphere is enchanted; it is full of greetings and reunions and new beginnings and of old friendship; with the every-day clothes the boys of old have shed responsibilities and dignities and are once more irresponsibly the boys of old.  From California and Florida, even from China and France, they come swarming into the Puritan place, while in and out through the light-hearted kaleidoscopic crowd hurry slim youngsters in floating black gown and scholar’s cap—­the text of all this celebration, the graduating class.  Because of them it is commencement, it is they who step now over the threshold and carry Yale’s honor in their young hands into the world.  But small attention do they get, the graduating class, at commencement.  The classic note of their grave youthfulness is drowned in the joyful uproar; in the clamor of a thousand greetings one does not listen to these voices which say farewell.  From the nucleus of these busy, black-clad young fellows, the folds of their gowns billowing about light, strong figures, the stern lines of the Oxford cap graciously at odds with the fresh modelling of their faces—­down from these lads in black, the largest class of all, taper the classes,—­fewer, grayer, as the date is older, till a placard on a tree in the campus tells that the class of ’51, it may be, has its head-quarters at such a place; a handful of men with white hair are lunching together—­and that is a reunion.