Harvard University - Red Book Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

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the Tide homeward. Thirty Commencers besides Mr. lNathanie1j Rogers, Sir lSamuel1 Mather, and Mr. Uohnl Emmerson. Sir Mather in England yet had a Degree conferred on him. Mr. Rog- ers and Emerson should have Commenc'd last year, but were hin- dered by Sickness. Within a few years after this we find records of the feeble be- ginnings of Class Day. But except for the members of the class, Class Day seems for many years to have attracted almost no atten- tion. Iohn Rowe, a Boston merchant of some prominence, gives us in his diary numerous glimpses of Commencement and of dinners and dances given about the time of that occasion between the years I765 and 1774, but Class Day as such does not seem to have been mentioned by him. ' James Russell Lowell said in an article in the Harvard Book: We suspect that the origin of the literary exercises on Class Day may be traced by no doubtful inference to an attempt of the Over- seers, beginning in 1754 and renewed at intervals for some ten years, to improve the elocution of the students by requiring the public recitation of dialogues translated out of Latin into English. Though this effort seems to have failed of its immediate purpose, it is very likely to have given a hint to the undergraduates and roused among them an ambition for volunteer displays of oratory. How soon it may have occurred to them that they might have a literary festival of their own it is impossible to say. 'Ilhe earliest authentic trace we are able to find of any organization of the Senior class which may seem to have had such an end in view occurs in 1760. The list of annual orators begins in 1776, and a poem seems to have been added ten years later. The latter date is noteworthy as coincident with the opening of Charles River Bridge, which made easier the access from Boston to Cambridge, thus rendering more probable the enlivening presence of a non-scholastic audience. Before this the ceremonies seem to have been restricted to an oration in Latin, sandwiched between two prayers by the President, like a criminal between two peace-ofhcers, and can scarcely have betrayed the most thoughtless to any excess of hilarity .... The Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings contain some interesting extracts from the diary of john Rowe: July 17, 1765. Commencement Day. Went to Cambridge, Mrs. Rowe, Polly Hooper, and Suckyg dined at Edward Wins- low's room, a very large companyg went to Mr. Hooper's room, also to Col. Thy1or's. The following day he took dinner at Mr. I-Iooper's, and in the evening attended a dance at the Town House given by Nathaniel Sparhawk, of the class of 1765, and Mr. Rowe adds that he Hdfiiciated as master of the ceremony. Similar en- tries were made in 1766. Under date of July 20, 1768, Mr. Rowe wrote: I went to Cambridge, stopped at Mr. Inman's, dined with a very large company at Jos. Henshaw's, paid a visit to Tutor Han- cock's, met the Rev. Mr. Barnard of Marblehead, afterwards paid a visit to Mrs. Green's, where were a very large company, too many to enumerate. july '17, 1771, has this entry: I went to Cam- bridge and dined with Mr. Inman, Polly jones and Sally Inman, after dinner I went to Col. Murray's room in the New Colledge, ' where there was a large company, Governour, Councill, and too many to enumerate. On july 15, 1772, Mr. Rowe gives an ac- count of a dinner he attended at Samuel Murray's room, at which Colonel Murray, Colonel Saltonstall, Judge Sewall, Colonel Oliver, Samuel Quincy, and other distinguished guests were present. The following day, July 16, Mr. Rowe writes: I went early to Mr. Inman's, who made the genteelest entertainment I ever saw on account of his son George taking his degree yesterday. He had three hundred forty-seven gentlemen and ladies dined, two hundred and ten at one table, amongst the company the Governour and family, and all the remainder gentlemen and laidies of character and reputation: the whole was conducted with much ease and pleasure and all joyned in making each other happy, such an entertainment has not been made in New England before on any occasion. These annual festivities, when a very large com- 'Hollis Hall.

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ITI-I the passing of college years has developed the time-honored custom of the Senior class taking some more or less formal leave of their friends, in- structors, and college surroundings. This custom has given rise at different colleges to distinctive fea- tures connected with the closing exercises. To every Princeton man the thoughts of Class Day ceremonies and festivities center in the old Cannon. Everyone who has attended the Class Day exer- cises at Leland Stanford, Jr., University, will think of Class Day with pleasant memories of the delightful Quadrangle Reception on the evening of Class Day. The link that binds us most closely to the Class Days of the past is the Class Day Tree. XrVith its massive branches towering ma- jestically above Holden Chapel, the Class Day Tree stands a silent witness to many a fierce conflict of the classes of the past. Genera- tion after generation have engaged in the Class Day festivities clustering about this Tree. The old Tree still stands behind Har- vard Hall, but except for the secluded half-hour or so spent around it by the Seniors, while making their farewell round of the Yard, the Class Day Tree has been shorn of the honor of being the center of the more spectacular features of Class Day, and the car- nival of today around the Statue has succeeded the flower rush Jn and charge of yesterday about the Tree. The beginnings of Class Day are shrouded in the mists of by- gone days. Here and there we find a scattered record of some History of Class Day simple farewell by the departing class to the college authorities. A round two centuries have come and gone, and the plain adieu of the closing seventeenth century has become the elaborate Class Day of nineteen hundred and three, opening with the Senior Spread the evening before Class Day, and closing with the dances in Me- morial Hall and the Gymnasium. The more solemn and formal ceremonies now occur on Com- mencement Day. Class Day has become essentially a day of social entertainment and enjoyment. Before the middle of the eighteenth century Class Day was unknown. Soon after this time, however, we find records of separate Class Day exercises being held. The beginnings of Class Day very naturally developed in connection with the established custom of Commencement Day. To an ar- ticle in the Harvard Book is added a foot-note of some inter- est: The social exigencies of the day are exemplified in an entry made by Tutor Flint in his diary on the eve of Commence- ment, 1724: 'Had of Mr. Morris 2 corkscrews at 4 d. a piece.' This, if it represent an average, was certainly a handsome tutorial provision. Mr. Morris, it should be remembered, beside teaching Hebrew in the College, kept a small shop fsuch as used to be called 'variety stores'j on what is now known as Winthrop Square. Commencement in those early days of Harvard is thus described by a witness in 1687: Mr. Mather, President, Pray'd forenoon and afternoon. Mr. Ratcliff sat in the pulpit by the Governour's direction. Mr. Mather crav'd a Blessing and return'd Thanks in the Hallf' The same writer made the following entryvin his diary for july 2, 1690: Came to Cambridge by Water in the Barge, wherein the Governour Iliradstreetl, Major Generall fWinthrop1, Capt. Blackwell, Mr. Addington, Allen, Willard and others: Had

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pany, too many to enumerate dined at Edward W inslow's room, or at Samuel Murray's room, and staid till six, are nothing else than the early stages of the Class Day spread, Down to the end of the eighteenth century, says James Russell Lowell, the official language of the college continued to be that of this Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum, and the cases were excep- tional and tentative where the Class Day orator descended to the domestic level and less difficult air of the vernacular. Latin verse was more arduous, and the poet seems from the first to have in- dulged in the less constraining jail-limits of his mother-tongue. Towards the close of the last century, ' and in the earlier years of this, the orator seems gradually to have given way at shorter inter- vals either before the hardships of Latin prose composition or the not unnatural ambition of making himself intelligible to his audi- ence. for in 1802 the Faculty, alarmed at the increasing tendency to molest the ancient solitary reign of classical precedent, passed the following vote :-- 'Whereas an innovation has sometimes of late years taken place in the conduct of the ceremony in the chapel on the day when the Seniors retire from College, after finishing their literary course, viz., the introduction of an English Exercise, whichgives it more the appearance of a public Exhibition designed to display the tal- ents of the Performers and entertain a mixed audience, than of a merely valedictory address of the Class to the Government, and taking leave of the Society and of one another, in which Adieu, Gentlemen and Ladies from ab-road are not particularly interested, And whereas the propriety of having but one Person to be the Organ of the class at the time of their taking leave of the College on this occasion must be obvious and as at the same time it is more Academical that the valedictory performance be in Latin than in English, as is thc practice in Universities of the most established reputation abroad, and was forn1erly our own: Voted, That the particular kind of Exercise in the Senior Class at the time of their taking leave of the College, sanctioned by the 'This was written in the nineteenth century. usage of a Century and a half, be alone adhered to, and conse- quently that in future no performance but a Valedictory Oration in the Latin Language, except music adapted to the occasion,'be permitted in the Chapel on the day when the Seniors retire from the S.ociety.' - ' To this vote of the Faculty is appended this interesting note by a recent writer: This vote probably explains the fact that there is a gap in the list of orators and poets for the six years following 1802. The object of the Faculty clearly was to check the growing publicity of the day. There is a strange blunder in the 'usage of a century and an half.' There is no allusion to Class Day, so far as we have been able to discover, in the diaries of Presidents Leverett and Wadsworth, Tutor Flint, or judge Sewall .... But Class Day, says Mr. Lowell, though thus tolerated rath- er than legitimized, and no doubt grateful enough virginibus puerisque, was not for many years yet allowed to Haunt it under the very nose of Commencement. , Henry Adams cites an interesting entry in the diary of a Har- vard man, which gives us the impression made by Class Day on one member of the junior class. iujune 21, 1786. Class Day. This day the Seniors leave col- lege. There is no recitation in the morning, and prayers are de-- ferred till IO o'clock. The class then went down in procession two by two with the poet at their head, and escorted the President to the chapel. The President made a very long prayer, in which in ad- dition to what he commonly says, he prayed a great deal for-the Seniors. but I think he ought to get his occasional prayers by heart before he delivers them. He bungled always when he endeavored to go out of the beaten path, and he has no talent at extempore composition. James Russell Lowellagives this entry from a private diary to which helhad access: Emerson's poem was somewhat superior to the general expectation .... This class danced around the Rebellion Tree. This was Class Day in 1821, and is doubly