University of Nebraska Lincoln - Cornhusker Yearbook (Lincoln, NE)

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THE, CORNHU3KER- NINE,TrKK.NWTWE-NTY 1920 ' s Twentieth BT Dr. H. B. ALEXANDER It is always morning at the University. Hour by hour, season by season, year by year, youth throngs in at the open gates, youth skurries and loafs about the campus and in the halls, youth works and studies, plays and plots, smiles light-hearted welcomes and waves insouciant farewells, till every cranny of the college is penetrated by the warmth and glow of the suns that shine betwixt the dews of sweet sixteen and the blown glories of two-and-twenty. It is morn- ing, morning everywhere, throughout our college days; for at entrance the sun is as it were but just parted above the horizon of home, and at commence- ment it is still not high in life ' s sky. It is morning, the morning of youth and hopefulness and of far-scouting fancy, and the whole college and the whole University lives in its glows and thrives in its buoyancies, and there isn ' t an old Dryasdust who mumbles among his books but tingles the warmer for its fine, fresh friendliness. If one were thoughtfully setting out to be a prophet, nowhere on earth could he find a better inspiration than the college atmosphere gives. Here promise is everywhere; here all minds are filled with big visions of the future; and here the lips and eyes of all greet it with a smile. How, then, should any man whose lot is cast amid happy youth refrain from prophecying if The Cornhusker ask it of him? One need not even close one ' s eyes; it is but necessary, with a grand wave of the hand, to point to things as they are as if they already were what they are to become, and to begin, youthful with the other youth, youthfully to suppose time to be at discount, quite bargained away. For suppose that our fancyings were real, and suppose that this very June were 1920 ' s Twentieth, and suppose that you and I and the rest of us were doing just what we shall of course do, and suppose By the whiskers of the patriarch , John Henry Cornhusker, is it you — back here again on the old stamping grounds! Same pinch in your mitten, old man! If I didn ' t know your face, I ' d recognize the grip. But you haven ' t the better of me. A ' 20 knows a ' 20 though twenty years have gone. It ' s good to see you back again, even if it did take twenty years to do the turn. What corner do you blow from? All the others. I ' ve done the world. But I couldn ' t miss our twentieth. It ' s our day, you knoW, — at least, that was the tradition in the old time? Same today. Nebraska sticks by her traditions — and proud of them. Yes, we choose the orator — first time since Ivy Day, 1920 — and we had a time to make the choice, for ' 20 was a talking class. They ' ve talked their way into Congress from a dozen states, and they near own the Legislature. Well, I ' m more of a walker than talker — you ' ll recall that, — but a good listener, too, and ready to tune up for the cheer-leader. Besides, may be you know, John Henry II is up for his sheepskin in the class of ' 40. Naturally dad wants to slip in. So you sent him back to Nebraska — that shows the spirit. Yes, and sense, too. There was a time, in the earlier years out, when Nebraska wasn ' t exactly one of the first to be named down where I home- staked. But before John Henry II was in long pants the tone was changing, 21

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