University of Vermont - Ariel Yearbook (Burlington, VT)

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with an irresistible longing to unfold before the unsuspecting inhabitants of this mundane sphere the perfected possibilities of his nature. Before attempting that hazardous feat, let us, as seniors, improve this last oppor- tunity to take sweet council together, and, if may be, discover certain pit- falls wherein so many of our unwary predecessors have been trapped and thereby most grievously disappointed of their fond senior expectations. Should any statement seem more unqualified than is warranted in the case of '91, we would plead in palliation a well known and becoming modesty which precludes extravagant portrayal DE POUVOIR BIEN CGNNU. Speaking from the standpoint of the present, we may, perhaps, be pardoned if, when nearing the end of a four-years period of comparative seclusion from the turmoils of the world, we thrust our telescopes boldly out through the port-hole of the college sanctum and philosophically aim them at society, at politics, or at religion, but often unconsciously apply our eye at the wrong end of the instrument. Such is the too common error. Again, glancing on into the future, we must expect that a few years of rude jostling with the multitude will be necessary to cure us of that peculiar malady which may be named irzfellecfzml sfmbismzrs. Nor should we, with Daedalian presumption, anticipate a flight too told and aerial upon pinions feathered only by the college diploma. It is characteristic of the undergraduate devoutly to expect that his poor little sheepskin, if haply he be granted one, will prove a passport to all conceivable regions, but fortunately there will await him, and us as well, at the very threshold of active life a universal panacea for all such folly--experience, hard-handed experience. The world is provokingly exacting 5 it demands value received l' for promise to pay U at every turn. I would like a position upon the staff of your paper, a youth once ven- tured to say to Horace Greeley. 1 am a graduate of C- University. Young man, that counts for nothing, here,'l replied the great journalist emphatically, Wlaaf can you do P And thus it is, when the college doors shall close behind us, the world will extend a fraternal hand, and greet us with a smile of welcome, but let the uninitiated look more closely and those same lips shall be seen framing the unconditional question, Wlaar can you do ? Not, Have you read the latest eluci- dation of the Attic theatre? but, jimi what can you do mm' bow well ? And now at the sacrihce of a truly commendable class vanity another emphatic reminder shall be given. Strange, but a fact never- 16

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HQ? Frzgidaz dies es! QUZIWZ 1'eli11qzfi71zu1'. HE other day as your duel representative was rummagmg I through a parcel of the choicest philosophical lore of the ancients, he chanced upon the above charming little gem of ' sentiment from an author too well known among collegians to justify even a hint at his name. This touching epigram, with its equally felicitous companion, Null:e muscae super nos, seems so exactly applicable to our intrepid class as to create a strong presumption that the immortal author had the power of looking into the future and imagined himself marching under the tattered but victorious banner of '91. However this may be, it is a fact, conceded alike by students, faculty and Burlingtonians in general, that the present senior class has swept everything before it, even as an avalanche in the valley of the dis- tant Aar. As a class, we are fearfully and wonderfully made , built, it would certainly seem, like the famous shay of yore, To run a hundred years to a day. Our achievements in every line of college activity are destined to immortality in the folk-lore and nursery rhymes of future generations, and, in view of this fact, it would be eminently appropriate and prohtable to give the college world through the columns of the c!q1'i6l a brief resume of our startling career, but the memorable day, when our place shall thenceforth know us no more, draws nigh, and timelier topics demand our consideration. Nletaphorically speaking, the healthy senior lives in the future, rather than in the past or present. He looks upon commencement day as the golden moment which is to let him loose upon the world. He is seized 15

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theless, that the moment our Alma Nlater sadly waves us farewell we shall count merely as ordinary mortals. We should continually bear in mind that college graduates are infinitely too numerous to admit of any audible murmur of admiration or astonishment even before the conbined splendor of our intellectual attainments. Our mental colossus may, by sheer magnitude of cranial development, occasion a partial eclipse of political ignorance, but, even he should clip the wing of too extravagant expectation. In such an attitude, then, does the world await us. On the other hand, what is due from us as an antidote to the distemper with which we may in consequence be afflicted ? Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, escaped from the tedium of the Happy Valley, fired with the desire to breathe a richer atmosphere of fellowship and experience, to lead the ideally perfect life, whose condition was unmixed happiness. With this as a goal he wandered up and down, entering the society of the gay and spirited, whose mirth he found at heart strained and hollow, studying critically the exalted rich and the lowly poor, only to prove the former burdenedwith cares and encircled by treachery, the latter groaning in the bitterness of poverty. Wisdom presented only mock felicity, while every feature of the social organism appeared unnatural and perverted. Weary of his fruitless search he nnally deemed his ideal impossible and returned to Abyssinia, there perhaps to pass a life sable-tinged by consciousness of the world's imperfection. Here we have the type of the universal life. Each of us shall be a Rasselas g and well for us if we may see his vital mistake and comprehend its meaning. The Happy Valley presented an ideally perfect existence in all save actual touch with experience. As he entered the world to gain the latter Rasselas should have taken with him all the beauty and all the exalted sentiment of the former. Woe to the man who leaves the Happy Valley of his Alma Mater for a world naught but ideally practical and discrimi- nating without importing the leaven of the ideal into the mass of the real. Indeed, despite an abounding spirit of worldliness which emphat- ically declares to the contrary, the ideal is the only true real, and the more vividly we realize this fact the less fatally shall we chase the phantom of perfect happiness as being something external and within the grasp of material prosperity. Lest your historian be too free with the proverbial wisdom of an unpretending class, he will now reluctantly lay aside the pen whose I7