University of California Berkeley - Blue and Gold Yearbook (Berkeley, CA)

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lue and these hill skirmishes. Small parties participated, and the affair had many of the features of a church sociable, for everybody knew everybody else, and there were no outsiders to be in the road and get stepped upon. Fierce mauling in wet grass, with limbs aching from exposure to rheumatic dews all night, and the relentless destruction of the hated numbers, followed by their transformation into the winning numerals, all these features were more carnal. and the church-sociable simile fails. No matter how many times the numbers might be lost and gained during the night hours, tradition gave to the victor at sunrise the right to keep the emblems on the hill throughout Charter Day, and the unwritten law further stipulated that they should be absolutely unmolested. These Charter Day rushes were always very earnest affairs. The men who climbed the steep hill and spent the night in irregular fighting and sentry duty were not the kind that had to be urged into the fray as many were in the big initial rush. The Charter Day rusher had formed the habit and frankly liked it. Men, who have gone up to the struggle with their class honor in one hand and bale rope in the other, and who have suffered ignominious defeat, have been known to add their tears to the dew on the grass in the bitterness of their loss. Life was very serious in those days, and I wonder sometimes whether the men those years turned out have proved any worse than the men of today minus these trials. Getting Bourdon Cremated Strenuous as were the rushes during the year, nothing could approach the ferocity of the annual Bourdon fight, the last and most important interclass conflict of the year. It was a time when much money and time were spent by both classes, when final reckless attempts were made to even up any losses of the year and when the two classes, that would never be allowed to rush each other again, eagerly embraced the opportunity to smite with all their mustered strength. The burial of Bourdon and Minto was the celebration peculiar to the freshmen . class. It originated in the unpopularity of two text-books, a work on algebra by Bourdon and an English rhetoric by Minto. Long after these valuable volumes had been abandoned, the spirit of the past clothed the two prescribed studies with enough irritation to render the burning of their effigies a public duty. All the Bourdon cremation centered itself about the coffin, in which the hated books and an assortment of fireworks were placed. The capture and retention of this trophy- was the casus belli. To send Bourdon and Minto appropriately to the region undergraduate sentiment consigned them, required a formal funeral with procession, high mass and cremation. Each of these features of the ceremony was important. The funeral cortege was a weird combination of mourning, warring and scoffing. The coffin was borne by a lofty funeral car (constructed from a very solid and unsympathetic truck). The hearse was open at the top and could not be entered except over the driver ' s seat. In it the priests set off red fire and skyrockets while the procession wound its way through the town ' s streets, passing the fraternity houses, and reaching the campus by devious ways. The procession had devils and priests appropriately mingled. Some carried cleverly painted transparencies whereon were inscribed the virtues of the freshman class, vilification of the sophomores and heartless jests at the conspicuous members of the faculty. Sometimes these processions were very long, but they dwindled before the goal was reached. There were obstacles that were insurmountable. Sophomore hate spent itself in breaking up that ceremony. It began at the outset in trying to find the rendezvous of the freshmen and destroying the transparencies, wrecking the wagon and stealing the pyrotechnics and, peradventure, the sacred coffin itself. Not content with purloining inanimate things, the bold sophomores made a practice of kidnapping the freshman president and all the speakers that could be caught in an unguarded moment. Once a host of freshmen captives were housed in a costly Oakland residence, the campaign donation of a wealthy sophomore. The freshmen rallied to the rescue of their speakers and the battle that was fought in that home was something unspeakable. They say everything was wrenched loose including the foundations. Only once was a wagon captured and destroyed before the procession started. In 1896 the freshmen had a wagon fortified with barbed wire. It was prepared in Oakland and brought out in the early hours of the morning to secret headquarters in Berkeley. The place was found, and, in a pouring rain ' g8 and ' 99 doggedly fought each other until the sophomores had won the day, captured the barn and taken possession of the armored hearse and its precious coffin. That feat nipped a well-planned burial in the bud. 24 Class Pilgrimage

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whole horde of prisoners and the struggle would have to be repeated again. with the spirits of the tired captors greatly ruffled and co-educational sentiments getting badly jolted. Nothing was so thoroughly depressing as this co-ed strength, which could never be calculated upon and yet often proved so disastrous. The older and more experienced class, even when sadly outnumbered, would usually give the freshmen all they wanted to do, and the close of the battle often found half a dozen vainly trying to tie up a vigorously fighting survivor of the already whipped sophomores. The close of a rush was simple. The dead and wounded were counted roughly and the president of the vanquished class was allowed to surrender gracefully. Then the victors gave class yells, hoarse with dust and shouting, and then the pile of tousled, bruised and discomfited foes was assorted, untied and turned over to despairing relatives and sweethearts to be patched up for tomorrow ' s recitations. Blue end Charter Day Activities Charter Day, March twenty-third, has other associations now, but at one time it meant deep strategy, undergraduate cunning and a short, sharp conflict on the hills in the early morning. Custom required the freshmen to place their class number on the hills behind the grounds some time during the night. The use of lime and f O .T Syec-J. AVaX oUV V-tt X V.sV- i s v ! t ' JX ' V 3 Sf . e N 5 . - r$ $ ffet :,;.. ' - vM ' ii:.; i ' c. ' sf -,--- .--.----- ' - ' ' - - - i-iiBSiris T TO W:fe ' - KicuperaXicm ; ' t i i, ' g T a wf (,o rf, W newspapers was generally enough to make the figures conspicuous for miles, but one ambitious class once excelled its predecessors by using cement ! The transportation of rock and water and cement by hand required a large force of men for the greater part of the evening, but the stone numerals stood for a long time, a monument of undergraduate enterprise. After the figures had been made, custom required that the ffirecious emblems be protected throughout the night. Those long hours around a fire, perched above thfe sleeping to-n. telling stories and singing songs, waiting anxiously for the onslaught of a hidden foe. those were good times after alL Custom further dictated that no well regulated sophomores would allow those. numerals to stay in their place without a passage of arms. Hence a strong force would see to it that the hill was stormed generally before sunrise. Instead of marching in a battle line, as they did in the initial rush of the year, the sophomores preferred to surprise their opponents. This included disposing of the pickets and stealing all stragglers that were caught away from the main body. Then, the swift swoop down on the freshmen, and the old tie-game. There was always something homelike about 23 Clan Pilgrimage

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As a rule freshmen managed to carry out some sort of a march through the streets was always enlivened by unexpected attacks. The high priests on the wagon were lassoed from their perches and dragged into the street, to have their shoes removed and their persons handcuffed to telegraph poles. The transparencies soon disappeared in a similar fashion. Often wire stretched across the street stopped the hearse and wire-cutters were called into play, while swarms of sophomores surged over the beleaguered procession of mourners. This was always a good time to unhitch the horses and loosen the wagon wheels. A drenching from fire hoses was also a favorite expedient. The entrance to the campus was a great place for trouble. One class stopped the Dana Street entrance with a water wagon, whose wheels had been removed. Then, to clinch matters, the College Avenue entrance was blockaded, while the frenzied sophomores attempted to chop down the bridge. In the end the freshmen drove back their foes and won the campus, arriving in a most undignified fashion for a funeral train. The pageant closed in the middle of the campus with a final burst of rhetoric from program. The TJ i . I -Tet armi s. Blue end fllue and Gold, 187% such pontifical dignitaries as were left on the hearse. The coffin was brought out and the Damnator applied his choicest invectives on the mass of the completed text- books. While the flames licked up the hated Bourdon and Minto, the Laudator sung the praises of the f reshmen and the Vituperator heaped obloquy on the sophomores, whom the spare priests and mourners were busily tying up. Time-honored custom reserved for the speech-making the choicest compliments of the disgruntled sophomores, and the aspiring orators of the freshman class had to do their best amid a constant shower of very ancien.t eggs. With all available sophomores safely tied up and reposing about the wheels of the wagon, the Bourdon celebration generally came to a close. Rushing is pretty nearly a defunct custom. It got its death-blow in 1897 when a freshman received a distressing injury in a skirmish with sophomores. The revulsion of a new tradition : and California has never taken kindly to hand-made customs, ever since, we have been witnessing the slow death of the old tradition. In its departure rushing has robbed Charter Day of a lively feature, and has taken the life out of a Bourdon celebration. A burial without opposition is too tame. Like the Irish wake, a little fighting gives the funeral some zest and compensates for the bother and expense. When rushing was interdicted, some of the classes tried to turn the Bourdon into a college custom, purely spectacular. But it was the manufacture of a ne T tradition : and California has never taken kindly to hand-made customs- After one or two distressing attempts to remodel this end-of-the-term celebration, the Bourdon burial has finally passed into history. 25 Class Pilgrimage