Harvard University - Red Book Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

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.4.....4nHK4. mv-vu .Y THE YARD ON CLASS DAY

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sation, it was agreed that the Brigade Band, which used to play on those occasions in the morning, 'should be engaged to play all through the day in the college Yard, by way of giving a certain festive aspect to the day, not due to the presence of liquor. It was also agreed that the Seniors should not supply the punch which had been considered a necessity imposed upon them by the old college customs, and on this agreement the President cordially offered that the whole expense of the band, which would otherwise have fallen upon the class, should be met by the college govern- 1nent.' . . . There was a large attendance of the belles of Boston, as there always was, and as soon as the exercises in the chapel were over, they repaired to the different rooms which were open for 'spreads' But then it was that the young gentlemen urged the ladiesqnot to leave after these refreshments, but to remain through the afternoon and be present, with their smiles and applause, when the Seniors should make the final dance around the Tree. This Tree had al- ways been marked as the Tree around which the class was to form, hand in hand, and at which they bade the college good-bye. It was the Class Tree of today, and was then known, I think, as the Rebellion Tree. A The girls stayed as they were asked to stay, and the band was stationed in the entry of Stoughton, which is next to Holworthy. with those windows open. I think there was no platform in front, but the music men crowded in as they could, and played as they were bidden from time to time. But of course with the forty or fifty young men of dancing age, and with as many belles of the choicest of Boston and Cambridge, it would have been absurd not to use the advantages which they had. Immediately dancing was improvised on the grass in front of Stoughton and Holworthy. All this was so entirely successful that, with the next year. . . . we had fiddlers and other such people to play for the girls. Our invitations notified our friends that dancing would be in order. and the dancing began, as I remember, the moment the exercises in the chapel were overf, In the same article, Edward Everett Hale makes the rather amusing and interesting statement that there was a nice old lady, whose name I have forgotten, who lived down on the Brighton road, who had a lot of very sleazy black silk gowns, which we used to hire for a dollar a day for use on such occasions as these. In 1836, at the two hundredth anniversary of the founding of Harvard College, an ode by Rev. Samuel Gilman of the class of 1811 was sung. This ode was Fair Harvard, and this cele- bration was the first public occasion at which Fair Harvard was sung. For some half dozen years before this song was first sung at Harvard, singing had been a feature of the Class Day exercises. VVithin a decade Fair Harvard had taken' the place it so well deserved as the regular Class Day Song. Gail Hamilton, in describing Class Day in 1863, said that the Oration and Poem form the first public features of Class Day. After the public exercises came the spreads Each member of the Senior class prepares a banquet,-sometimes separately, and sometimes in clubs, at an expense varying from fifty to live hun- dred dollars .... When the feasting was over, the most picturesque part of the day began. The college green put off suddenly its antique gravity, and became Embrouded . . . as it were a mede Alle ful of fresshe Houres, white and rede,- 'Houres' which to their gay hues and graceful outlines added the rare charm of fluttering in perpetual motion. Everything was fresh, spotless, and in tune. It scarcely needed music to resolve all the incessant waver and shimmer into a dance: out the music came, and, like sand grains under the magnet, the beautiful atoms swept into stately shapes and tremulous measured activity,-M 'A line, sweet earthquake gently moved ily the soft wind of whispering silks' .

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Nothing can be more appropriate, more harmonious than danc- ing on the green. Youth and gayety and beauty-and in summer we are all young and gay and beautiful'-mingle well with the eternal youth of blue sky and velvet sward and the light breezes toying in the tree-tops. Youth and nature kiss each other in the bright, clear purity of the happy summer tide .... ' The funny part of Class Day comes last,-not so very funny to tell, but amazingly funny to see,-only 'a wreath of bouquets fast- ened around the trunk of an old tree, perhaps eight or ten feet from the ground, and then the four classes range themselves around it in four circles, with their hands fast locked together, the Freshman class on the outside, the Senior class within, grotesquely tricked out in vile old coats and 'shocking bad hatsf Then the two alternate classes go one way around the tree, and the two others the opposite, pell-mell, harum-scarum, pushing and pulling, down and up again, singing, shouting, cheering ,... and going all the time in that din and yell and crowd and crash dear to the hearts of boys. At a given signal there is a pause, and the Senior class make a sudden charge upon the bouquets, huddling and hustling and crowding and jumping at the foot of the old tree, bubbling upon each other's shoulders into momentary prominence and prospect of success, and immediately disappearing ignomin- iously, making frantic grasps and clutches with a hundred long arms and eager outstretched hands, and finally succeeding by shoulders and fists, in bringing the wreaths away piecemeal, and then they give themselves up to mutual embraces, groans, laments, and all the enginery of pathetic affection in the last gasping throes of separation,-to the doleful tearing of hair and the rend- ing of their fantastic garments. Such is the impression received of Class Dav on June 19, 1863, just forty years ago today. Save for the substitution of the Statue exercises for the Tree exercises,- legalized rowdyismf' as Gail Hamilton called it,-Class Day today is essentially what it was in the early sixties. The list of Class Day Officers for June 22, 1866, when Moorfield Storey was Orator, differs only in minor details from the list of Officers of today. There was no Ivy Oration delivered. Each outgoing class elected its Chaplain. The Class Committee consisted of two members instead of three, as it does today. The Photographic Committee and Senior Spread Com- mittee are additions of more recent date. A tide of increasing opposition to the exercises around the Class Tree set in, and with the class of '98 was introduced the S.tatue exercises. The earliest Senior Spread of which I have been able to find any record is the one described by Edward Everett Hale in My Col- lege Daysfi He says that on the night before Class Day, some of the Seniors, I do not know but what all, went out to the lower part of the college grounds, where there was still a grove of trees, and 'consecrated the grove,' as the phrase was,-which meant, drank all the brandy, whiskey, rum, and other spirits that they liked. This bears little resemblance to the Senior Spread in Me- morial Hall and the Delta that now comes the night before Class Day, and we should doubtless find a very different origin in reality for the Senior Spread. The old consecrating custom, however, is none the less interesting. Doubtless the origin of both the Senior 'Spread and the dances on Class Day evening in the Gymnasium and Memorial Hall dates to the dances given by individual members of the classhor by a number of members of the Senior class together. Mr. Ro-we men- tions attending such a dance on the evening following Commence- ment Day in 1765 given by young Nathaniel Sparhawk in the Town House. A short and simple address in. Latin, and a response, also in Latin, were the unassuming beginnings of our exercises in San- ders Theatre on the morning of Class Day. The exercises about the Statue, during which the proverbially reverend Seniors became a Hwrithing sea of humanityn in their frantic endeavors to get within their grasp the coveted flowers from the Statue, and then run the gauntlet beneath a perfect