The Mail To the Editors of the CRIMSON: AROUND THE TREE

UNDER the cloak of irony a writer in the last CRIMSON raises the cry, "Away with the exercises around the tree on Class Day. They are a disgrace to the students, making them appear as rowdies and boys rather than as gentlemen. Let us have no more of them."

This view of the case has been set forth before, and is, perhaps, gaining adherents each year. While admitting that it has some truth in it, we are loath to believe that the exercises at the tree have so far degenerated into boyish rowdyism that the only course whereby the Seniors can show themselves still to be gentlemen is to abolish the whole performance. Cannot the much that is good be separated from the evil, and preserved to give variety to the diversions of Class Day?

To the cheering and the singing of the Class Song no one surely can offer a reasonable objection. The scramble for the flowers is boyish nonsense, it may be said, and unworthy the dignity of Seniors. To a certain extent this charge is true: but it is so unbecoming to play the boy for a few moments before we separate to take our places in the world as men The costumes which this exercise compels us to don are often quaint, if not handsome, and at least offer some relief to the eye from the dress-suits worn the rest of the day. The mock affection of the embraces can hardly be called a deception, since no one supposes that the number of our friends is to be counted by the number of our embraces; and as for the nonsense of the proceeding, the truth of the well-known rhyme about "a little nonsense" and "the wisest men" shows that if any wish to be foolish they have good precedent therefor, and if not, no one compels them to attend the exercises at the tree.

The eagerness with which the tickets to the tree are sought shows that in reality our friends do not by any means object to seeing us act as boys, even though in theory they are compelled to blush for us, and may declare the frolic to be disgraceful.

That some few Seniors, conspicuous by the smallness of the number, do show that their potations have been so frequent as to make them forgetful of the conduct becoming to gentlemen, hardly proves that the rest of the class should be debarred from a pleasant frolic. The personal disgrace of a few does not disgrace their class.

The only worthy objection to the exercises around the tree is the dust and shouting raised by the rush of the lower classes,- the sole remaining sign at Harvard of the enmity which is proverbially connected with the name of Sophomores and Freshmen. Although the abolishing of hazing is not so universally considered an unmixed good among either alumni or undergraduates as the college papers have represented, still the fact that hazing and the kindred practice of rushing have become customs of the past would justify the Seniors, should they see fit, to forbid the rush of the Sophomores and Freshmen on Class Day.

Aside from the sentiment manifested in assembling the other classes with the Seniors for the last time, it would be hardly generous to shut out the other classes from the ground, since there is room for but few of them on the seats without excluding fairer guests. It would be well, however, as has been suggested, for the Class Day Committee to ask the lower classes to hold a meeting and agree to give up the rush.

The writer in the CRIMSON tacitly assumes that the antiquity of the custom of class-tree exercises is the only argument in its favor. The intense radical spirit at present prevailing here, which says that all that is old in ways and beliefs is consequently wrong, and whatever new, right, would condemn this plea of antiquity as worse than none, forgetting that change and improvement are not always synonymous terms, any more than antiquity and perfection are. The variety which Harvard Class Day furnishes in the way of entertainment is one of the pleasant features of the day, and the exercises at the tree form an agreeable contrast to the more solemn and dignified proceedings at the Chapel. Seniors are not the less gentlemen for showing for a few moments that they still have youthful spirits, and rowdies they do not show themselves.