Haverford College - Record Yearbook (Haverford, PA)

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ample, as every junior college miss and Lower Merion coed knew, was not only a handy place to read but also an ideal place to pick up boys. In this subtle game between study and sex there were certain informal rules, all designed to insure the triumph of the latter. What you were reading, for instance, was extremely important. Obviously John Updike ' s latest was going to be a better come-on than George Eliot ' s earliest and stuffiest. But in either case the results remained pretty predictable in this coy version of an old and elemental. struggle. On the other side of the net, the game progressed in intensity, and the stakes grew higher and higher. It was inevitable that the contest should extend beyond the periphery of the campus. The pursuit of knowledge seemed to know no bounds. The search assumed the aspect of a biblical quest. The Genesis has been our culpa (fortunate or unfortunate, it did- n ' t seem to matter which), but Exodus was promises. Having dimly heard of another fortress of the intellect in the near distance, we set out con- fidently on a pilgrimage to Bryn Mawr, that promising land of milk and honey, the fertile crescent of beauty and brains. Along the way, however, the Main line demi-monde presented its own array of temptations to the weak-willed traveler. PennFruit was a Van- ity Fair whose artificial displays gleamed out of the wasteland like a mi- Page 10

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landscape, with just a framework of formal elegance under its easiness. Sir Charles ' discerning ' contrast between the formal and the easy may be extended to describe our whole life here, with the campus and its en- virons as a metaphor for our existence. In its easy aspect, the campus is arcadian, idyllic, unreal at times. On a fine spring day it seemed to exude an intoxicating liquor all its own, at night a heady, dark brew of quiet delight. But these things ended all too abruptly when one was thrust back into the more formal rigor of study. Our life here was a perpetual round of sensation and analysis, communion and isolation, reflection and politic regurgitation, and the spirit of the campus itself reflected these cycles, enticing us, inspiring us, always pervading us. The library carrel and the Union coop represented perhaps the purest examples of these formal and easy aspects of campus life. One was the epitome of solitude, the other the height of socialization. Both could be carried to an extreme, both could be used as escapes. Yet both seemed es- sential, both seemed to fill real needs, whether they were real deficien- cies of knowledge or alleged deficiencies of the dining room. In most cases, however, the opposing aspects of formality and easi- ness were found close together, curiously re-enforcing but at the same time competing with each other. The Haverford library proper, for ex-

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t - rage, luring- us on by hidden persuasion to a deadend aisle of satiety. The Comet was an oasis, intimate and agreeable by contrast, but reached only after much delay. How often we slipped into that veritable Slough of De- spond, Tenth Entry. Ah, Tenth! Here we wasted away many a night and days, darting from dark despair to infinite possibility, writing on the waters of our hopes a love-hate letter to the world. It was all so happy and so fu- tile. When we finally arrived at the gates of Bryn Mawr after that some- what jejune journey, even if the place wasn ' t all that it had been cracked up to be, our facile imaginations quickly made it so, and that last unsullied Page 11