CLASS-DAY COSTUMES.

AT nine o'clock on the morning of Class-Day the Seniors are expected to assemble in front of Holworthy Hall, ready to carry out a programme arranged nobody knows when, and arrayed in a costume never worn of a morning except on this one occasion. I have no desire to make war upon the customs of Class Day generally, although I think that had the class of '75 instituted the rush around the tree, '76 would have done away with it and no murmur would have been heard. Had '74 started the custom of delivering the very superfluous "Ivy Oration," '75 would have seen at once that one oration in a day ought certainly to be enough for men of moderate desires, and on their Class Day no such useless proceeding would have been gone through with. But since these exercises were begun by the class of -, and were thought by the next class of sufficient importance to be kept up, they have become for the undergraduate of to-day "old customs."

I am no iconoclast. On the contrary, I am an implicit believer in everything old and sanctioned by custom. I do not say that these customs of ours should be given up because they are silly, but that they should be clung to tenaciously because they are old.

There is, however, an old custom which years back was supplanted by an innovation, and if it chooses the class of '76 can restore, as well as keep up, old customs. On this day, on which we display ourselves as "liberally educated young men," and aunts and cousins, young and old, come to gaze with wondering eyes upon us, we appear in a dress by no means appropriate to the occasion. No blessing was ever conferred upon man equal to that which prescribed the form of dress which he should wear at evening. A morning coat can be of many a shape and many a shade, but when we meet at night we need have no thought of our dress, we must all be arrayed alike. To this blessing custom has added another in prescribing one unchangeable form of dress for college ceremonials, while we sacrilegious beings have rejected the goods the gods provide.

It is as out of place for a class to appear in evening dress at nine o'clock in the morning on Class Day or any other day, as it would be for them to appear at a ball in reefers. The dress of the undergraduate upon occasions is a black gown and a college-cap, profanely called a "mortar-board." This costume was formerly worn here, and as we retain foolish customs because they are old, I should like to hear some logician explain the chain of reasoning which leads us to reject a custom both old and sensible.

I remember seeing, in some Western college paper, objection made to obliging a class to appear on a certain occasion in dress-suits, that the class in question would have to purchase a suit for which they would have no use afterwards. This objection may be made against our returning to the old Class-Day costume; but it should have little force, for it need cost no man more than eight dollars to dress himself properly on his Class Day. I earnestly hope that the matter will be seriously considered, and that on the 23d of June the Senior class will appear in the conventional cap and gown.

A. N.