Bryn Mawr College - Bryn Mawr Yearbook (Bryn Mawr, PA)

Page 12 text:

Banner iaregentation November eighteenth was the date of our second experience with Gymnasium Dramatics, the occasion being the presentation of our banner by 1906. The whole gymnasium that evening had become Japanese. The parasols and lanterns, the bower where the characteristic decorations were concentrated, the Japanese maidens (whom we could hardly recognize as really Juniors), even the programs, in the form of little fans — this scene, to which we ourselves gave the only Occidental note, prepared us for the performance of The Japanese Nightingale. 1906 had made a charming play from the well-known novel of that name. The leading parts were taken by Phoebie Crosby, who was Jack Biglow, and Lucia Lord, who was Yaki Sani. The other players were Louise Cruice, Jessie Hewitt, Ethel Bullock, Louise Fleischman, Grace Neilson, Grace Wade, and Frances Lyon. After the play, and after refreshment, our eyes were once more directed to the stage, where Lucia appeared, reclining on a gleaming silver crescent. She gave us our banner — then of delicate fresh blue, with pure white numerals. Then the Juniors sang to us the song which is now a legacy to every even class: Two years ago, we as Freshmen. With awed voices we replied, briefly, yet summing up the event of the evening and expressing our aspirations for the future : Juniors, you have brought to us, This our banner fair, Which we now with reverent love, Salute as it hangs there: Our banner blue We receive from you, And to it and 1906 We will all be true. Louise Milligan.

Page 11 text:

iUntern i!2tgl)t We can never forget our Lantern Night. An unseasonable snow- fall had begun in the morning and by evening it had ceased, leaving the campus white and still. After the good old fashion we formed in a half circle by Denbigh and waited silently. There was a beautiful bright moon, which heightened the outline of the gray buildings against the paler sky and cast firm black shadows on the white snow. Looking away towards Pembroke we could see a cluster of yellow lights and below them dim lines of trees and bushes almost hiding the great arch. Then in the far distance we caught the first faint notes of Pallas Athena. Gradually the sound grew clearer and fuller, now and then there was a flash of light, and at length two dark figures emerged, their blue lanterns swinging at their sides and casting brilliant reflec- tions on the white below. Amid the soft, dying words of the chant the procession, with its line of swaying figures, wound nearer and nearer, till it had formed a second circle within that of 1908. Then with a murmured word of good will each Sophomore handed over her lantern to one of us; and we in our new caps and gowns, carrying our new lanterns, swept slowly away, to cherish actually in our college life that spark of the flame divine which we had received symbolically through this beautiful ceremony. Anne Garrett Walton.

Page 13 text:

Ct)e political 2®te Meeting There is one memory of our Freshman days to which we will look back with a reminiscent smile, in the years to come — perhaps when we cast our own vote in our own drawing-room; that memory is of the political mass-meeting - . In those days, before the time of Mrs. Cobden-Sanderson and the Equal Suffrage League, we had not aspired to be suffragettes, and at that stage of our careers would have shrunk from contemplating the interior of a prison. But we did have brothers and fathers who were at least tolerably interested in the elections, and most of us had begun Pol. Econ., so we felt a thrilling suggestiveness about the very words political mass-meeting; and the results justified our expectations. Of course the upper classes had most to do with the management of affairs, for our verdant newness forced even 1908 to be content as also-rans; but we cheered the transparencies (politely ignoring the fact that they refused to stay lighted), added a large share to the uproar, and joined lustily in the hoarse question, What ' s the matter with Roosevelt? and the equally hoarse but exultant reply, He ' s all right! Who ' s all right? would pass down the line, and Roose- velt came ringing back the answer. After marching around the campus, while William Armitage set off fireworks behind his little hedge, we adjourned to Taylor — headed by a band most fearfully and wonderfully clad, and there listened to soul-stirring and persuasive speeches by Swallow, Carrie Nation, and other footlight favorites basking at that time in the ephemeral light of the public eye. They are now merely names — some of them not even that — and the future college classes will know them no more. But to us, though the indi- vidual heroes are forgotten, though Roosevelt and Fairbanks — for whom the overwhelming majority of us voted — have become an impos- sible political combination, yet the memory of our Freshmen dabbling in politics — a blaze of lurid transparencies, shouting, tin-pans, fire- works, caricatures, and clever speeches — will remain for us a confused but permanent recollection of one of the good times of our college days. Mary A. Kinsley.