University of the South - Cap and Gown Yearbook (Sewanee, TN)

Page 27 text:

he ( ap attb (faoxvxx. 21 have had dyspepsia for a week, when ten days of November weather have been transported bodily into the middle of July, when you have stumbled over four several cows and eighteen several roots in endeavoring to reach your lodg- ings on a dark night, when you have gone to hear the bell ring itself hoarse because the Vice Chancellor has refused another call, when year by year you perceive that more scholarly work is being done in the several schools and that new departments are being added, when you find that neither absence nor years can dim the devotion of a single alumnus to his alma mater, when you see in your dreams the splendid group of Academic buildings completed, when to crown all you feel in your heart of hearts that your little mite of work is being done in God ' s service when it is being done for Sewanee, then you feel that the Sewanee spirit that has taken hold of you and will not let you go, is an inspiration and a joy forever — then you feel that not to appre- ciate that spirit is barely to be tolerated in a Philistine and to jest about it an offence that would be unpardonable in anyone save a Joco-SERiuS.

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2o ©tje ©ap anb xvm. has been known to be heady, it has to be dashed with common sense to keep it from being too intoxicating as well as to make it palatable to others. A person who has taken his Sewanee spirit, in large quantities, straight, is as likely as not to imitate the jeweler in Browning ' s poem, with the nightmare, name and cast himself off the battlements. When you have gone to the library to consult the fourth volume of Bancroft, and found that it has been missing for ten years, when your favorite Hardees or Sewanees have lost the championship, when you hear that Mr. So and So has said that Sewanee is too High Church for him, when you have been asked for a subscription to help one of the literary societies out of debt, when to crown all you hear that your name has been bandied about by Mrs. Grundy and two of her intimate friends, then you feel that the Sewanee spirit which prevents you from at once packing your trunk is a disease more felt than elephantiasis or the chewing gum habit. But when you sit quietly down and study Sewanee ' s history from the documents , when you compare a photograph of the first chapel with the new Walsh building, when you think of the men and women who have given their prayers and their lives to built Sewanee up, when you see in your mind ' s eye Bishop Quintard planting the cross in the midst of the virgin woods, when you see Faculty and Students working in harmony to develop a great University, when you see the interest that every man, woman and boy takes in a Sewanee Athletic victory, when you see the merits of his air castle in the full belief that he will reach the hard, bare ground of real facts with limbs unbroken and breath unspent. These are the ' people who con- sole themselves when our base ball nine goes off and gets beaten , by remark- ing, well, the boys certainly looked nice, didn ' t they? These same people also arrive at a public lecture half an hour late and wonder why the lecturer ' s face is not wreathed in smiles at their advent. They are disgusted too, if you cannot make up your mind the moment you get off the train whether to be a Sewanee or a Hardee. They are simply horror struck when you suggest that a Lyman medal contest is slightly wearisome. But what is this Sewanee spirit after all ? asks the impatient reader. Cela depend, dear reader, that depends upon — well, upon the digestion of the person rash enough to undertake to give you an answer. The Sewanee spirit sometimes appears to be a disease, sometimes an inspiration. When you

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22 lje ap anif (faarort. f hc t )0d x f iht ©lct$ tc + We, who are the aristocracy of intellect at the University, and have chosen that path up the hill of knowledge, which while it offers the most beautiful views, is at the same time the most rugged and dangerous, feeling that our experiences along that path may be of value to those who come after us, and of interest to all the rest, while our hearts yet swell with the climb- ing, our stone bruises smart, and our breath labours, pain would recount some of our adventures. These have been many and varied. When years ago — it must have been in the Silurian age, — we started out, it was with many wrong ideas. Thus we thought that sentences like the one which opens this article were inadmissible. But when we found in the model orations of Demosthenes sentences about an acre and a half in area, we changed our minds. We thought that Homer was a great poet ; we wept over the parting of Hector and Archomache, and felt our heart burn within us at the wrath of Achilles. We know better now. Homer was no poet, he was a gram-