WHAT! NO SOUP?

Spring, as Botticelli so aptly put it, comes all in a lump. It is heralded by many things, by the zephyr, by the crocus, by false alarms, by the appearance of checkered golf hose, by a certain fever. Not least is it characterized by what might be called the de-hibernation of athletics.

The startling information that between the fifth of April and the twenty-first of June the College will witness or take part in 146 athletic events assures the restless undergraduate that there will be no lack of activity for the next few months. And for the more domestically inclined the golf ball will shortly replace the clinker as seasonal big game. In a word, physical will soon supersede intellectual exertion.

There is little doubt that February, "when the rigors of winter confine him to his rooms and the rigors of the curriculum confine him to his books" is the month in which the undergraduate, more than at any other time, can be classed as a thinking animal. If some of his thought is expended on his surroundings rather than himself--it can hardly be regretted. What is regrettable is the forgetfulness that comes with Spring. Talks around the fire cease with fire, books are neglected for the sporting page, and the fountain pen drops into the carburetor. Education becomes an unfortunate restraint, and for all the average undergraduate cares the College may order or disorder his work as it please. "Lhude sing cuccu!"

Such a change of attitude can hardly be encouraging to the observant educator. To him the time given to student opinion must seem wasted, that opinion itself farcical, and the spirit that offered it one of hypocrisy. He has sailed many months, he has sailed many weeks over uncharted seas of hypothesis on a search for the Snark of serious student opinion, and lo! it is only a Boojum. He may well be excused if he decides that his is a thankless task, and determines that the student should be taught rather than educated.

But probably even in his case the fever will work for optimism, and he will realize that, as the meteorologists tell, there is nothing more normal than a "seasonal control". And he may also remember what he has long known but perhaps forgotten under the necessity of reports that there is no such thing as an "average undergraduate", except in advertisements for quality cut clothes and in non-defining editorials. And that even if there were, what he did or said or thought would matter as little to anyone as to him. The college that always considers the average undergraduate will be but an average college.

"Where" might fairly ask the still toiling educator on the seventeenth of May next.

"Where are the rows of yesteryear

And where the morning's stew?" if they have subsidied and congealed completely it will be indeed discouraging. But it is safe to believe that they will not. Not improbably there will remain underneath a small fire which will keep the pot bubbling, and which blown to fierce flames by the next winter monsoon, will have the whole congenial mess at a pleasant boiling-point ready for the appropriate seasoning of a very experienced chef.