THE INEVITABLE ARRIVES

Custom, always moth-eaten and unimaginative, decrees that, in the phraseology of Olympus, there shall be a recess from April 19 to April 25 inclusive. This statement as included in sundry calendars of University affairs appears uncommonly bald and non-committal; but like the succinct phrases of the Parieal Regulations and communications from the dean's office, it covers an amount of ground in exact inverse proportion to the number of words involved.

And this is no mystery to the undergraduate. The proper expounding of "From April 19 to April 25 inclusive" can safely be left to his ingenuity, and he begins his interpretation by ignoring the mechanical sound of an official "spring recess" and talks yearningly of "spring vacation" for months beforehand. It means that, long since weary of sloppy pavements and chill breezes around the corner of the library, he can betake himself to the country where things are getting green as well as sloppy, and where the chilliness of the breeze can be discounted because one naturally expects to be cold in the country. Or it means that he can go to New York (which is what he probably will do) and celebrate the joyous springtime in theatres and other places, so far from pastoral thoughts that he will shudder whenever the taxi careens along the doubtful freshness of Central Park. Those on the Dean's List have long since fitted; perjury and persuasion are the order of the day; still the undergraduate must wrap his legs around his chair until this morning before picking up his suit-cases and heading for the South Station.

Seniors, looking warily out of the corners of their eyes and listening to the approaching footsteps of divisionals, laugh hollowly when they consider the coming nine days as either vacation or recess. Syllabi and theses will now occupy all their time instead of only part of it. They are already weary of knowledge in spite of the small amount of it they have acquired; and they have a time ahead of them when, weary or not, they must learn in bulk instead of bits. Time was when spring vacation meant that they too could make holiday after the taste and fancy of their natures; but, saving become not men but seniors, they have put away childish things. If it only made them feel better, there would be something to it; yet they have nothing to comfort them but boredom and an increasing suspicion that the laws of supply and demand apply neither to games nor to candles.

It would never do to impress the authorities with the notion that the spring recess is unwelcome. Anything would be welcome after Cambridge at this gusty indecisive season of the year; but the certainty that it is coming, that it will be like previous spring vacations, that it will not even have the opportunity to be at a different time is sure to emasculate its pleasing qualities. A constructive suggestion might not be out of place. Let Olympus keep its own counsel in the matter until a day or so before the bomb is to burst; then let the ukase be issued with all the fanfare of trumpets and headlines that it deserves. People can only be surprised into gratitude.

It would be like a game of button, button. Gossip would take on an important tone that is lacking when it is concerned only with the Watch and Ward society and the Lampoon's difficulties. And the undergraduate body would throw its academic worries into a corner, and depart to be joyous, and return undisappointed, and the bored way in which the College accepts the recess that is doled out to it would be forever replaced by an abiding sense, however, false, that they had really got something for nothing.