Full Sever Quad Swelters, Listen to Ward, Manning

Muggy heat and the threat of rain failed to keep over 1000 seniors, their relatives and guests, from listening to two line gags, pleas for money, and exhortations in the Sever Quadrangle yesterday afternoon during Class Day exercises.

After a brief welcome to the gathering by First Marshal Chase N. Peterson, Lester L. Ward called "man, that biped with the neural Stich, still a basically humorous character," in the Class Oration.

Admitting that this group of seniors, like every group for the past 50 years, was at the cross-roads, he said he hopes it will not be forced into one path or another.

"The struggle of this class is to avoid being placed into any neat scheme of things by either right or left," Ward said. "From a diverse, often a perverse world, we seek guides to action. 'Liberal' is once again a naughty word. Every generation must find its own philosophy. But today, the nightmare has replaced the dream as a vision.

"Our search," he claimed, "has been made easier as the rosiness has been stripped from Communism. But I hope this class can learn to live without a strait-jacket.

In a yukked, wandering-collection of jokes and jibes, Ivy Orator John B. Manning smirked his way through 15 minutes of allusions to exams, football weekends, and the faculty that brought occasional giggles from classmates. He described how a history major wrote on his exam that a triple entente was a large club sandwich at the Wursthaus, a Math major proved the earth was a triangle, and an English concentrator claimed Anton Chekhov ran a delicatessen in Brooklyn.

"But be it always said respectfully of each one of us. 'Oh, yes, he's a Harvard man," he concluded, and then announced that the Porcellian Club was throwing open its doors to the general public immediately after the ceremonies.

Hugh Amory read his Poem, and Dustin M. Burke the Class Ode, after which Chorister James L. Harkless led in its singing to the tune of "Fair Harvard." Sandwiched between these literary notes was a plea for money by President of the Alumni Association William M. Rand '09, and a welcome to the ranks of the Ten Thousand Men by Henry R. Guild, head of the Harvard Club of Boston, and representing the Associated Harvard Clubs.

The three Class Marshals, Peterson, John L. Lewis, Jr., and Walter C. Carrington, made the presentation of the Class colors to freshmen William Coakley, George MacDonald, and David Wise.