'Skipping to Recitations'

To make mention of the walks in the Yard has come to be, in the course of College generations, as bad form as to talk about the weather. But though we realize this we would fain make a suggestion. Apparently it is impossible to keep the walks dry, by subsurface drainage. But a certain amount of labor, applied promptly, in proper quantity, and with intelligence, would often take its place.

On Wednesday last the walks in the Yard were for hundreds of feet an inch and a half deep in snow slush by ten o'clock in the morning. This was merely the snow which had been packed down by the passers when it fell, and which was sure to melt with the first thaw. As this was inevitable, provision might have been made ahead, so that when the snow began to soften on Wednesday morning, a dozen men set to work promptly could have made all but two or three of the paths clear and dry before eleven o'clock.

As things actually happened, however, less than half the slush had been cleared away at three in the afternoon, and only four workmen were then visible. Two of these were shoveling slowly. Two were wandering without apparent intelligence or purpose in a part of the Yard which is always dry. Students were still doing what they had been doing in the morning--skipping and splashing to recitations as best they might, and inevitably soaking their feet in snow cold water. --Harvard CRIMSON, Jan. 7, 1899.