"STANDS IT NOT WITHIN THE PROSPECT OF BELIEF?"

Below is a petition sent to the faculty in 1902 by Miss Winnie Verdantique. It is written - the petition, not Miss Verdantique - on the daintiest kind of note paper with the coat-of-arms of the Green family impressed at the top. For Green pere, you must know, once kept a grocery, "but arter the war he had went on the street" where he was known among his set as "old Green," and so when the Heraldic Bureau were asked to "find" his family escutcheon they suggested that he take the name of Verdantique. The coat-of-arms, by the way, is quite peculiar and characteristic - uncomfortably so, Miss Winnie thinks. There is a light-green barrel of petroleum surmounted by a bull which knowingly winks his right eye; one hoof is raised to the side of the nose for some unaccountable reason - probably wants to scratch it. The petition has evidently been carefully sealed in an envelope that seems to have been opened by some skeleton hand. The paper had a sulphurous smell, but for what reason we can not divine - for what there is about a sealed envelope to make people swear - but never mind.

DEAR FACULTY : I write to you to ask you if you wouldn't make the proctor in my entry behave himself. In the first place, when he passes me on the stairs, he invariably winks at me, a thing which I don't even allow one of the instructors to do, (unless I've got a condition); besides he is wretched homely, and smokes cigarettes, which you know is not at all comme il faut, and I don't see how you ever came to make a Yale graduate a proctor. His room, of course, is right above mine, and the worst of it is that he is trying to learn the new waltz. You giddy devotees of Terpsichore of course know what that is, and so you'll pardon me if I don't go into details. Anyway, he is just learning it, and he does raise the most tremendous racket - "racket," by the way, is not slang, as it has survived the ravages of time for twenty years, and Prof. Dale says it's the correct thing - but I digress. Our proctor, in his endeavors to master the intricacies ("intricacies" is good) of this new freak of nature - I mean the dance, not the proctor, - jumps over tables, climbs the curtains, fastens himself to the chandelier, knocks down the book-case, and all this time is trying to play an accompaniment on a flute. You must see that he can't do both well. I am willing to stand the dance, but there are some things human nature will not bear. While I hardly think of it in this place, the old saying about "A word to the wise," etc., I do hope that you'll make the hateful thing quit. If you don't, I'll pack up every blessed thing I've got and go home. Yours, as ever,

WINNIE VERDANTIQUE, '03.In a number of the Harvard Daily Janitor (so called because it came around twice a week) we find an account of the class races that took place on the same date that the above petition was written. The article referred to says : "On last Saturday the weather was so inauspicious that it was found necessary to postpone the races until this morning." We do not wish to make any prophecies concerning the result of the contest, because things have come to such a pass that if we dared to express our humble opinion our office would be instantly crowded by a throng wildly waving their pocket-books (empty, probably,) and crying out "What'll you bet?" In our list of the crews, it will be noticed that after the name of each one of the girls who row in the crews today, we have put under the "age" unknown. As our reporters could not obtain the age from the girls themselves, we sent to the office in the tower of Memorial, (where it has been placed owing to the little use to which it is now put,) but the sympathetic lady who presided over the higher regions refused to betray what she was pleased to call a "sacred secret," and consequently all we will say as to "age," is, "you can imagine."

We trust, however, that whatever the result may be, no undue enthusiastic levity will be shown, such as carrying the victors about on the shoulders, begging for locks of hair, etc., etc. It is said that the president will give a banquet of ginger-ale and crackers to the winners. This munificence calls for the highest commendation, and a cup from the Athletic Association if they have one left.