University of Santa Clara - Redwood Yearbook (Santa Clara, CA)

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THE REDWOOD. There was music, too; the best of music, and plenty of it, all of which had been expected, because the music program had been arranged by Augus- tus Aguirre and Harry McKenzie, Bachelors of Arts and masters of near- ly everything else. McKenzie, it may be noted, an passant, is lawyer, politi- cian, musician, monologist, heavy- weight comedian, and all-round foot- ball star; while Aguirre is merchant, prune speculator, vocalist, sketch-art- ist, Shakespearean reader and profes- sor emeritus of Rugb3fology; but, as entertainers, they are Cohans; they are Dockstadters. The toastmaster was Charles M. Cassin, whose classmates of twenty years agone marvelled at the meta- morphosis of Slats, the living skele- ton, into the impressively heroic fig- ure of the aflfable giant from the shade of the Casino. Cassin ' s youthful atten- uation lent color to the libel tha t, when shaving, he used a step-ladder to reach the auburn stubble on his map. Since that interesting period, he has attained a rare and radiant baldness from scrap- ing his altitudinous dome against the bottoms of chandeliers. The success of the Alumni speechfest, however, was in no small measure due to the versa- tile Cassin, whose vocal electrics illum- inate Santa Cruz campaigns with the best brand of oratorical pyrotechnics exploded anywhere from the Big Basin to the Seventeen-Mile Drive, and from the Apple Center to the sea. The responses to the several toasts were characterized generally by a de- lightful intermixture of wisdom, wit, humor and college spirit, which made the intellectual enjoyment worthy of the gastronomical. Toastmaster Cassin ' s remarks were all very felicitous, and his encomium of Rev. James P. Morrissey, Santa Clara ' s brilliant young President, was greeted with prolonged applause. In his toast, The Faculty, Father Morrissey spoke in laudatory terms of the many eminent Jesuits who, after long self-sacrifice, had witnessed the gradual fruition of their glorious life- work in the great school which edu- cates heart as well as mind and keeps in view the ultimate purpose of man ' s temporal life as well as the nature of the Divine promises concerning the life to come. Rev. Joseph P. McQuaidc, whose in- fluence with President Taft was the magnet which drew the Panama-Paci- fic Exposition to the Golden Gate, en- thused the Alumni with a mirthful ap- plication of College Spirit. The sol- dier-priest chose illustrations from the phonological records of the immortal yelling-squad of ' 87, whose representa- tives, by the way, deemed it probable that a few of the banqueters hailed from Missouri, and exemplified their combined lung-power with a yell that oscillated ' the pen of the St. Francis seismograph. Then, all of a sudden, the lights went out and a momentary hush fell on the darkled hall, till out of the silence broke a thundering cheer as out of the shadow burst a white flame, in the glare of which glowed and scintillated, Kohinoor-like, a marvellous crystal letter — the initial letter of the magic name of Santa Clara. With its illum- inant, it stood on a silver salver, which was borne on the head of a liveried servitor. The letter, A , carried like- wise, but reflecting a ruby fire, fol- lowed, and then eight other letters, al- tf mating white and red, completed a

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THE REDWOOD. FESTUM ALUMNORUM Hang the Almanac ' s cheat and the Catalogue ' s spite ! Old Time is a liar! It was a boys ' affair entirely. There was not a sign of an old fellow in the hall. Age and youth mix no better than water and oil; and, anyhow, age is a bore and was not invited. There were two hundred boys at the feast, — boys of all ages from eighteen to eighty, brown-haired boys and golden- hairedl boys, some with black hair, some with white, and not a few with no hair at all; but there was never a nobler gathering in the Gold Room of Hotel St. Francis than the round-table gathering of June 21st, when the proud sons of a proud Alma Mater showed in festive re-union (as they show always and everywhere) their loyal love and devotion for laurel-wreathed young Santa Clara. Not old Santa Clara, mind you, but a Santa Clara grown } ' Oung with years ; for though flames swept away her tenement of the past, yet, new-born, as it were, from the ashes rises a greater Santa Clara, more beautiful in every feature, more per- fectly equipped for the objects Provi- dence designed her to achieve. Wonderfully precocious were those juvenile celebrants, for their number included priests, philosophers, scien- tists, erudites, adepts in the arts, poets, authors, dramatists, lawyers, doctors, bankers, merchants, manufacturers, in- ventors, and twenty or thirty ordinary millionaires. The president of the evening was a lofty-browed youngster on whom Father John Nobili, some five-and-fifty years ago, bestowed the honors of the classical course, Primus et Altimus, with the flattering commendation that in Greek and Latin the student was ab- solutely unrivaled. The recipient of this laudation was the Hon. Thomas I. Bergin, the first graduate of Santa Clara College, and today one of the most distinguished members of the California Bar. At that time, ex- plained Mr. Bergin, with a humorous smile, I was the only one in Greek and Latin. In the festal groups be- fore him, students who obeyed the pre- fect ' s bell in 1851 were merrymaking with the Mission infants of 1911. The whole big family was as happy as the day was long, and it was the longest day in the year. Speech and song, the breathing of the flute ' s soft notes, the entrancing music of the violin were banquet enough for many an esthetic elder ; but the thing about a banquet that appeals most pressingly to the boyish heart is the menu. At the Festum Alumnor- um that appeal was irresistible. Lucul- !us, playing host to Pompe} and Cicero in the Apollo, provided no dishes more tempting to the palate, no wines so delicious with distilled sunshine and imprisoned laughter. The Romans had no such luxuries of fish, flesh, tree and vine, — they had no such cooks as ours. And who dare say the wines of Tus- culum, flowing from the rude processes of antiquity, were comparable to the exquisite vintages of Ville Marie? Who takes stock in the fable of Roman lords sipping from golden goblets a nectar that had ' been mellowing since the days of classical mythology? Lu- cullus was born twenty centuries too soon to know what to eat and how to eat it.

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THE REDWOOD. procession which serpentined about the hall, aligned in front of the table of honor (at which sat the officers of the Alumni andl the speakers of the even- ing), and elicited cheer after cheer fo r the emblematic red and white of SANTA CLARA. Electra once again touched the chan- deliers with her wizardry, and the ban- queters tilted their glasses to the wid- ening fame of the college that effectu- ates the fond dream of Nobili, the sainted Jesuit pioneer. There is never a dearth of eloquence at a Santa Clara College banquet, and the June re-union was profusely dec- orated with the choicest flowers of rhetoric, plucked anywhere from Quin- tilian to Quackenbos, while the rare and princely display of gems of ora- tory suggested! thoughts of the lavish pearls and gold which Milton showered en kings in porphyry halls in the gor- geous Orient of his imagination. Lewis F. Byington discussed the achievements of The College Man in the Professions ; Hon. James D. Phe- ian treated of the duty of The College Man in Public Life ; John J. O ' Toole compared Santa Clara Old and New ; Joseph A. Farry recited some of the traditions of The College Campus ; James P. Sex told of the glories of The Mission ; and A. D. Splivalo fitly concluded the program with a beautiful tribute to Santa Clara Col- lege . Was the festal happiness unallowed? The speeches contained never a note of sadness, but around the flower- deckedl tables, in the silences between the music and the toasts, the boys spoke softly and tenderly of the befov- ed ones who had graced the board in days gone by, but who are seen no more, save in dreams that fade, or v hen the filmy procession passes mournfully through the dim chambers of memory — boys, like Steve White, who left their lasting impress on the Nation and the times; boys, like George Sedgley, who made the world their debtor for the modest good they wrought. There is a tinge of sorrow upon every earthly joy. The tear on the face of Pleasure was for dear old comrades missing; and that tear made unwilling answer to the poet ' s ques- tion, so pathetically sweet: Shall we always be happy and laughing and gay, Till the last dgar companion drops smiling away? The night is done, the tale told, the banquet history. Old Time a liar? Nay, Time is only too true. Let us propitiate the grim fellow with the scant forelocks, — the snowy-bearded monarch with the hour-glass and the scythe ! In our behalf we would have him exercise a fonder care as now he rolls the big globe round the sun, for every boy of all that intellectual king- dom of boys which made its capital for a day in the Gold Room of the St. Francis — every foster-son of Santa Clara longs to see again the kindly faces, hear again the music voices and feel again the rejuvenating inspiration of the epoch-making Festum Alum- riorum. — Chas. D. South. Litt. D. ' 09.