SHOPWORN TAXIDERMY

Sharing long, long thoughts with Boston in her bereavement, Harvard cannot but reflect on how the love of symbols makes the whole world kin. From nursery days, every man garners to himself all manner of sticks and stones to remind him of great days passed and glories hoped for. There are totems for Indians, Ikons for Russians, aviators for Prussians, and St. George for England. And for Boston, a whittled pieces of pine--the sacred cod.

Regrettably, by the hand of fate assisted by a grimier hand nearer home, the mark of Boston's salty fame has had strange bedfellows in the public press: Benny the Alligator, James the Polecat, The (Sacred) Owl, the (Sacred) Ibis, and other stuffed nonsense. Weary of swinging in the winds of State House oratory, the grand old effigy could have taken its leave, alone and in honor. It deserved better than to disappear with a zoo-full of mildewed bridge-prizes. For the sacred cod, aloof and unsullied, is no kin to these doubtful deities, these gods brought down to the market-place.

Indulgent parents built the Lampoon building so that Harvard's problem children could have the very nicest playhouse in all Cambridge, with towers and Dutch picture blocks and hidey-holes. They filled the nursery with stuffed goosies, Limpopo crocodiles and other whimsey things. Good children should play "I-Spy-the-Ibis" all by themselves and not go annoying busy grown-ups. If there is any more naughtiness, the funny old birds will be locked up for good in Agassiz Museum with the dead mooses.