Oberlin College - Hi-O-Hi Yearbook (Oberlin, OH)

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came with the illumination and student pageant on Tuesday night. Under the skillful management of three faculty members the campus assumed aspectacle on that eventful Tuesday night, not surpassed for ligh.ts and enthusiasm by an election night on Broadway. Great festoons of lanterns hung from trees and buildings. From the new flag pole went out radiating lines of light to all parts of the campus. The Commencement attendance had reached its maximum. Every- body was at that high point of careless joy and abandon which char- acterizes all gatherings of old classmates and sch.oo1-fellows. As the time for the parade drew near and the streets bordering the campus became packed with people, one began to realize how many strangers were really among us. Around the reviewing stand in front of Peters Hall the throng was thickestg and all the fun and foolishness of a political night-pageant was rampant among the waiting crowd. in At last the parade appeared, gorgeous beyond words, spouting forth on every side the choking smoke and gas and blinding light of colored Hreworks. The applause was loud and long as the proces- sion moved down the street, and as band after band marched by, the enthusiasm knew no bounds. To detail the various stunts would be impossible. Words could not do them justice. Nothing approach- ing the pageant had ever been done in Oberling and never will be done again perhaps until twenty-four years hence when the college celebrates its hundredth anniversary and the loyal sons and daughters 18

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T H E H I - O - H I 1 9 1 0 and the visitors could admire the building, while they listened to the music. Both th.e library and chapel were near completion by June nineteenth, and everybody displayed the liveliest interest in their architecture and practical usefulness. The Olney Art Collec- tion had been moved from Cleveland some little time before and was on exhibition in the library during the whole of Commencement week. -The chapel, rising in its exact symmetry and simple mag- nificence fulhlled in the hearts of the visitors Keats' wonderful syno- nym for a thing of beauty. These substantial evidences of the growth of Oberlin and the generosity of h.er donors, were very fittingly brought to a Hnished state when so many of Oberlin's sons were back to see them. Further comment upon them is useless: they stand witnesses themselves of their usefulness and beauty. 8'6 Of the most unusual feature of the entire week, the alumni dinner, it is difficult to write satisfactorily. It was such a mammoth undertaking that a brief comment is pitifully inadequate. The mere seating and feeding of three thousand people is a task to challenge our admiration. The great crowd was divided and subdivided according to numerals, and from all parts of the tent as the dinner progressed came the rival yells of the classes, from nineteen eightn away back to the fifties, and perhaps even farther. There could, of course, be no unified yelling, and as the event proved, no unified singing, but President King and Madame Johnston brought out a universal applause as they walked through the crowd from one end of the tent to the other. The mere bigness of the throng was intoxicating, as it always is, and everyone felt inclined to vell for Oberlin, for Prexy, or Madame J., or something, from pure joy at being present. Speeches under these conditions were of course impossible, and the frac- tion of the diners who were fortunate enough to have tickets, adjourned to the First Church. to enjoy the post-prandial feast of wit and cleverness. 83 The climax of the festivities and gayety 17

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T H E H I - O - H I 1 9 1 0 of Oberlin again return to worship at her shrine and send off fire- works in her honor. But gradually the red-ligh.t gave out and the little fizzers sputtered desperately into darknessg the last division passed Prexy's stand and broke ranksg and the crowd began to move away through the town. Friends and class-mates bade each other good-night and hied them to their beds. The streets were soon deserted and only an occasional fugitive couple who had mis- calculated the length of the parade could be seen hurrying nervously across the campus trying to reach their house before lights were out. The few remaining lanterns burned up and smoked slowly outg and before long the stillness of the night was broken only by the coughing of some enthusiastic parader or the distant strains of an ancient serenade. 8? Reflections upon the usefulness and raison d'etre of all this unusual effort are almost out of place. The thing justifies itself. Oberlin had progressed through seventy-five years of noble and earnest effort for the good of men. It was right that we should hold our little jubilee in remembrance of what we had done, and talk over among ourselves the ach.ievements of our past and the hopes for our future. But if we must have a further reason for so large an undertaking it is ready at hand. Oberlin was in duty bound to tell the outside world what she had ' been doing during all these seventy-five years. Much of the work had been quiet and unseen. The progressive development from a struggling infant institution in the west to one of the foremost educational centers of the country was for the most part unosten- B tatious. At times, to be sure, our - reputation spread abroad, during the war even more perhaps than we deserved. But these occasional flashes only served to dimly light to the public gaze the great stretches of intervening years between. Even our sister col- leges were scarcely aware of our strength and resources. That the world in general, and those who 19