1901 Trinity Yearbook

Page 29

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HERE was a time, at that, not so long ago, when a frightened mob of" watery, pulpy, slobbery freshmen" came tumbling down between the lines of grinning demons who cried, "Fresh! Fresh! Fresh!" at the top of their voices. What a rude awakening for the spoiled darlings of twenty preps! But the pulpiness soon wore off under the kindly, though autocratic, hammering of '"99 "-peace to their ashes-and soon we, in our turn, were forging the raw material into shape. This period of Sophomoredom was one of hard play and hard work; for. despite the fact that at the end of Freshman year we knew it all, there were still some few very minor details we could absorb to fill up a cranny here and there in our gray matter. Then came the awakening. Junior year beheld us standing around in knots, struggling to come to a realization of our separate and collective missions in life, and to find a solution of the soul-absorbing problems of ethics. In this year we were allowed to elect anything under the sun, even the mighty mysteries of History were no longer barred to us-and many grew pale and wan plucking the elusive date. After a summer vacation spent in hard study under various" conditions," we emerged into the perfected state and walked the campus clothed in o ur own righteousness-Seniors at last ! Then came the feast of reason-the contemplation of our own minds through the medium of Psychology-a new dragon sent out to fill the devastating place of Metaphysics. An unknown world lay before us, and not even the keen intellectual remembrance of ethics could lessen the zeal with which we pursued the elusive idea through cribriform plates, optic-thalami, and pineal g lands till we came at last to the sensorium, only to learnalas !-that matter was-well-" no matter," a nd mind-well-" never mind." Up to the midyear exams the college had been monotonously quiet; even the relaxation of beginning a new term, with marks to burn, failed to aro use the college body which was fast reaching a state of nervous prostration from inactivity. So Nineteen Hundred held a sm oker, to seek out the reason for it all, and, if possible, to arouse a little enthusiasm; to quote from the d aily papers: "The smoker recently given by Nineteen Hundred was a great success." Such successes, be it remarked in passing, are apt to breed ennui in the men whose a nimation is suspended for four weeks. But "the feasting and the folly and the fun" is nearly over; soon we too will join the ranks of the graduates; in four years we may come back to be "rubbered at" in chapel by the unregenerate, and Nineteen Hundred will be only a date-to outsiders, yes-but to ourselves it will be more than anyone dare express. All the memories of four seething years will be compressed into four magic figures at whose mention will flash back upon us the phantasms once so r eal-lost ideals will haunt us as we think of the "might-have-been" and again our hearts will yearn for the days of Nineteen Hundred at dear old Trinity. Yet who would go back to that day of September, inety-six, when we had all our life before us. Then we knew not where we stood-much less do V..•e know now-but we have no time to waste in morbid introspection ; our shoulders are at the wheel of time, and to cease from straining means annihilation. So now, as we stand on the threshold of a new and wider life, let us pledge a last time, in friendship's wine, the class of Nineteen Hundred, who, led it well or led it ill, were true to their motto: ETOLfJ-OL 8' dE[. P. L. B.

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