University of California Berkeley - Blue and Gold Yearbook (Berkeley, CA)

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1 THE BLUE AND GOLD. , xh another ' s back with a book under his arm crede m experto. Still another jolly trio was that comprised of Tom Taylor, Tom Hughes, and Canon Kingsley, who have reminded us, in one of their effusions, that they Once a year like school boys Robin Hooding go, Leaving fops and fogies A thousand feet below. A large group was that which gathered around the table at Ambrose ' s fifty years ago, and sent in regular accounts of its nightly proceedings to Blackwood ' s in the form of the immortal Nodes Ambrosianae, with many of whose pages any article in THE BLUE AND GOLD would com- pare favorably. The authors are described as meeting in a tap-room, eating and drinking an enormous quantity, conversing a little on current topics, drinking again in fact drinking all the time and finally reeling away home. And these men, not on account of these scenes at Ambrose ' s, nor yet in spite of them, were regarded as leading spirits in a great party half a century ago. If farther illustrations of our proposition are required, any biography will furnish them. Lives of great men all remind us that they enjoyed the follies of youth as much as any of us. For our individual encourage- ment it needs nothing more than the rollicking lines of Dr. Holmes ; their strong ring brings home to us in a free sense the joyousness of being one of the boys, and we unite one voice with his in singing Then here ' s to our boyhood, its gold and its gray, The stars of its Winter, the dews of its May ! We turn from the long faces of the Berkeleyan contributors to the jolly countenances of these mighty men, who have retained their fun-loving dispositions notwithstanding their gray hairs, and our mind is determined ; with the latter shall our lot be cast. But perhaps in these radical times the order of things has been reversed ; perhaps it is right that sages and philosophers should defy old age and be jolly good fellows, and that young men should assume the sedate deportment of Sisyphus. Is it the case elsewhere than in Berkeley ? If so, we will retract our resolution and defer fun and nonsense to our grand climacteric. We turn to the Eastern colleges and beg to be enlightened. It is no tale of quiet, hardworking students that the Cambridge or New Haven tradesman, searching for his missing sign, pours into our ears. We turn to Princeton and are in- formed that the Divinity students can and do whip all the rest of the college in a free fight. Dartmouth sends us, with its greetings, a full account of the last hazing scrape, which is only exceeded in brutality by the annual nigger affair at West Point. We are convinced that there is still life in the Eastern Universities, and cross the Atlantic to ascertain whether they have degenerated in the Old World institutions of learning. We fall in with Seward of Christ Church, and Buller of Brazennose x

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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. Nor is the race yet extinct. Indeed in this country it has flourished beyond reason, and now counts among its members representatives o( all classes and all occupations. It includes the business man who toils early and late until his constitution is gone and his body is a wreck ; it includes the broker who drives himself into a frenzy on the floor of the stock ex- change, and the merchant who goes mad over his counting-room desk. Sisyphus fills our legislative halls with oratorical flights and our statute books with bosh. As a judge he overrules all his predecessors and swells the reports with his verbose opinions. He is everywhere, and everywhere he is the same. Even at Berkeley we find him, and here he is the osten- tatious student, the dig, the man who, whatever his momentary employ- ment may be, at all times hugs under his arm some precious volume ; he who writes wordy articles, with high-sounding titles, for the Berkeleyan, in which he condemns the frivolity and levity of those around him. Their recreations are vanities to him ; their follies crimes. It was Sisyphus who penned, several years ago, a protest against the observance of traditional college customs, whose only reason for being, accordiug to him, is their antiquity. We are exhorted to rise to a higher plane of thought pre- sumably the one on which Sisyphus has taken his stand ; we are urged to abandon collegiate follies and, among other happy results, it will follow that THE BLUE AND GOLD, unable to survive on the spare diet of stale jokes and selections from the Register, would be presently gathered to its fathers. With even more harshness are some other cherished insti- tutions treated ; in fact whatever destroys the monotony of study is decried by this would-be reformer as unworthy the attention of rational beings. But we spurn his doctrines and denounce him as a false utilitarian. In spite of him we will continue as before to give up a portion of our time to our follies. He may be as virtuous as he pleases ; but for us, we will still eat our cakes, and drink our ale ; hot ginger shall still burn our mouths, and THE BLUE AND GOLD shall ever find in us a hearty patron. And we have authority for our conduct. The great men of all times have had their hours of relaxation, and have spent them not at sober tea- drinkings, nor yet in sedate conversation ; not they, but in noisy laughter and sportiveness. That our good faith in making this statement may be unquestioned, let facts be submitted to a candid world. No man of his time was more famous for his intellectual acquirements than Scott ; but neither was there any one jollier or more bent upon en- joying life. Many were the drinking bouts participated in by Scott, Clerk, and Erskine the three inseparables and frequent were the pranks they played upon friends and neighbors. Those were the days of giants; but no dwarf could be more frisky upon occasion than these gents, nor could a clown be merrier. Witness the great Jeffrey, who wrote articles for the Edinburgh Review which might compare favorably with the contributions of Sisyphus to the Berkeleyan, found in his garden playing leap-frog with two friends. And a man cannot vault over

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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. honor men, both of them, and Buller sure to be a double first. We hear nothing from them of cruel hazing scrapes, but we are entertained with descriptions of cock-fights, town and gown rows, boating and wine parties, ad nauseam. In Spain we meet a number of itinerant collegians, with spoons in their hat-bands, enioying vacation in their own peculiar way, and in Russia have the pleasure of seeing a bust given by the students in the Winter Palace. Ah! what merry dogs are the Russian students ! An absurd spectacle is that which we are invited to witness in Heidelberg, the reception accorded to Freshmen, or, Nasty Foxes, as they are called. The ceremonies are ridiculous, burnt cork and beer play- ing a prominent part in them ; and are none the less laughable on account of the greeting song, some stanzas of which have reached thi s country. And smokes the fox tobacco? And smokes the fox tobacco? And smokes the leathery fox tobacco ! Sa! Sa! Fox tobacco? And smokes the fox tobacco? Then let him fill a pipe ! Then let him fill a pipe ! Then let him fill a leathery pipe ! Sa ! Sa ! Leathery pipe ! Then let him fill a pipe ! And now we return from our flying trip, convinced that human nature is the same the world over. Inspired by this novel and sage conclusion, we snap our fingers in the face of our glum looking monitor ; we take pleasure in throwing off restraint at times and performing deeds that will live in the pages of this book. And from this book itself we derive grati- fication, for it is a history of four years of our life of the life of every student. The Freshman is pictured as he draws toward the end of a well- spent year a year of good resolutions and low marks. The vacation passes quickly spent at home in the bosom of his family and he returns to find himself a student-at-large. However, explanations are soon in- vented and given, and, if the fellow is clever, four or five conditions are easily disposed of, and the whilom Freshman becomes a Sophomore. Over this period of his life we must draw a veil, and remove it only when he blazes forth into a Junior, full of conquests and conceit. What verses pass between young jackanapes and a lady who describes herself as A creature fair With shadowy hair, And a nymph with languid eyes. But these trifles are forgotten when a silk hat presses the Senior ' s brows, and his money has been forwarded to the Thesis Agency in Chicago. Everything is forgotten then but the glory of being. To this period have we come, and here let us rest, content to trust the future to itself. ? 1 1