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The class of '85 at Columbia celebrated their victory over their "treacherous foe, Legendre," by a triumphal procession Monday evening and a "convivium." The procession was formed in Madison square, and was headed by a transparency by which the class expressed the undergraduate position on a much debated subject-co-education. To give an illustration of the practical working of this system, four students were clad in female attire. "One wore a fashionable poke bonnet and a scarlet dress with puffed sleeves, and smoked a very long and strong cigar; another was attired in modest white, wore a coquettish flat straw hat with blue ribbons, and talked in a deep bass voice; the third was clothed in the sober garb of a middle-aged matron, but had refused to sacrifice his mustache, and the last represented a prim and dignified spinster, but was betrayed by the vigor and pathos of his profanity when a brother stepped on his skirt. The other members of the class wore long muslin gowns and high silk hats, on the front of which their class year, 1885, was inscribed, while the back was covered with Greek mottoes and unsolved quadratic equations, thus heaping contumely upon Legendre. Invited guests from the other classes were present, all attired in a similar garb, and bearing their class year upon their tall hats. They attracted a great crowd about Madison square, which stretched across Broadway and Fifth avenue, and obstructed the passage of vehicles on the street and pedestrians on the sidewalk."
"At 10 o'clock the procession was ready to move. It was headed by a band which played triumphal martial music, after which the lectors, bearing their flaring torches, marched in a double row. Then Legendre, represented by a wooden skeleton, attired only in a red flannel shirt, was ignominiously hauled to his doom in a brick cart, in which rode his executioners. After him marched the triumphant sophomores in a band fifty strong, bearing torches and Roman candles, and thus making their pathway glorious. After the conquerors marched the invited guests from the other classes of Columbia, presenting an imposing appearance in their long white gowns and high hats, as if they were householders fleeing from a burning city in their night dresses."
The procession, which numbered about three hundred, took its line of march up Fifth avenue, shouting the class cry as it advanced. All the streets along the line of march were crowded with men, women and children waving handkerchiefs and joking with the jubilant sophomores. When the procession reached the college campus the effigy of Legendre was deposited upon the fatal scaffold, near which stood the sacrificial altar with its colored fires. As the students gathered around the scene of death the haruspex, Henry A. Bostwick, pronounced the doom of the victim in verse. The victim was this time represented by a goat, and he was allowed to choose between three fates-either to become a dude, to go to Harvard and be "culchawed," or to be burned upon the altar. At the mention of the first fate the goat trembled visibly and desired rather any other doom, and he preferred death to Harvard. Then the executioner fell upon him savagely with a heavy baton. He was beaten to death, and being disemboweled, was found to have fed himself on "pony leaves" like any other student. Then the body was cast upon the funeral pyre and cremated, while the victors sang an exultant song.
Legendre being thus disposed of, Carnifex, personated by Edmund A. Wasoon, delivered an oration in honor of their triumph, taking all the glory of the victory to themselves.
After this came the "convivium," which needs no description.
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