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pass away pleasantly the evening hours, and so have been initiating the Juniors into the secrets ends Presentation Day.

of the Senior societies; and since the youthful spirits of undergraduates have been deprived of expression in the pow-wow and the burial of Euclid, all these initiations have increased in rigor and deviltry. Yet as they are secret I shall not disclose them. The very names of these societies-Spade and Grave, Skull and Bones, Scroll and Key-have an air of mystery. Let the secrets be found out by the initiated, and by these only. In place of the pow-wow this year the Freshmen, at a certain hour of Presentation Day, marched up and down Chapel Street as a body-guard to Hannibal, who, at

arm, a pair of eye-glasses over his nose, one of the new red biennial caps of the Sophomores upon his head, and a sporting cane in his hand, was personating the high feeling of the newfledged Juniors as well as any negro could. Thus college fun, denied expression in one way, finds vent in another; and while the keen-eyed tutors are urging the abolition of this or that old custom, they are only feeding the vices of

the university will always be youthful, and the sooner you legitimate, as in the case of the Wooden Spoon, their attempts at amusement, and make them respectable, the more you do toward correcting the abuses and vices into which students are so apt to fall.

Changes come with this day also in the other classes. To-morrow morning at prayers the Juniors will take the Seniors', the Sophomores the Juniors', the Freshmen the Sophomores' seats; there will be in appearance but three classes in college for the next six weeks, and these changes are usually marked by certain demonstrations in each class. The Juniors last evening held the Wooden Spoon Exhibition; the Sophomores put on their biennial caps; and the Freshmen used to hold their pow-wow on Wednesday evening, during the hours of the President's reception. The red caps of the pres-tired in a scholar's habit, a huge book under his ent year are quite an improvement upon the willow canes of former days; they are a step toward the student badges of the English universities, and are by all means to be commended. But the Freshmen are sadly put to shame now by the vigorous efforts of the Faculty, even to the threat of the expulsion of seventy men from the class, to put down their pow-wow. This is an institution of some fifteen years' antiquity. It is the most characteristic of college gather-college life with fresh flames. Young men at ings. The following is a description of the powwow in 1857. In its main features it is true of every year: "About nine o'clock blasts from sundry tin horns in the Freshmen quarters reminded the weary and sleepy that Presentation Day 'wasn't dead yet.' As it grew later and darker, Freshmen, covered as to their faces This very Wooden Spoon Exhibition was once with burnt-cork, Freshmen with striped pants, so frowned upon by the Faculty that its meetFreshmen with hooped skirts, Freshmen with ings were held in secret at the Temple, and none hoofs and tails, mild Freshmen with coats turn- were admitted save those who could pass the ed inside out, fierce Freshmen with big beards most searching tests of identity; yet many a and bob-tailed trainer - coats, Freshmen with time, even with these precautions, they were bears' heads, and Freshmen with bare heads badly interfered with by the sudden presence of -in fine, Freshmen with all sorts of conceiv-a Professor. But finally, in 1852, the Faculty able and practicable disguises, each one arm-concluded to let them alone; and since then the ed with a banger as big as he could lift and a performances, always of course a burlesque upon tin horn as big as he could blow, issued from the Junior Exhibition which is held a few weeks their rooms, and marching sternly across the earlier, have increased each year in respectabilcollege-yard, assembled at the State House steps ity and interest, till this year, on the eve of for the purpose of celebrating their entrance Presentation, the "Spoon" was attended by an upon Sophomore year. After orating in spite audience of over three thousand in the new Muof the noisy Sophomores, who kept up a contin- sic Hall, and in point of brilliancy and elegance ual shouting of 'Hear!' 'Hear!' 'Good!' is surpassed by no public gathering in the whole Time for you, Fresh., to be in bed!' and sun- University calendar. At first the Spoon, from dry other equally entertaining and witty re- which the exhibition takes its name, was presentmarks, they sang a Greek song that looked quite ed to the greatest glutton in the class--and tranatural, and then formed the procession. The dition says that a most worthy D.D., now resiboarding-schools were serenaded as usual, only dent in the Elm City, was the first recipient; one, however, acknowledging the compliment. next it was given to the man who took the lowAt half past two in the morning squads of mud-est appointment at Junior Exhibition; now it dy Freshmen crossed the college green and dis- is given to a man who has certainly a low apappeared among the brick buildings, there to pointment or none at all, and who, in respect of dream for an hour or two of hobgoblins, Greek personal popularity and good fellowship, leads his songs, mud-puddles, serenades, fair faces, morn-class. An essential requisite, too, in a Spoon ing flunk, and dunning pow-wow committees." So much in memory of a by-gone festival.

While the Freshmen have thus been praising themselves and abusing Sophomores and tutors, a much more mysterious work, after midnight, has been going on in the two upper classes. The Seniors, fresh from the President's levée,

man, in these days, is a full purse and a generous heart. So that, it certainly seems, as does Junior Exhibition, its representative man for certain things. The Spoon itself, made of rosewood and elegantly carved, hardly comes within the dimensions of common use, though it might have done very well for the "sons of Anak," or

the giants of those elder days.

The leading feature of the evening is the presentation and reception of this Spoon. The cleverest man in the class receives it, and the next cleverest man presents it, and their speeches are always happy and genial. Another feature is the excellent music from one of the best bands in the country. Still another is the scenic representations of college life. And still another is the burlesque philosophical oration and the half Latin, half Saxon Salutatory, in which the fair sex, especially the boarding schools of the city, receive flattering yet amusing compliments. And still another, and perhaps as pleasant as any, is the singing of original songs in honor of the Wooden Spoon and of the starlit nights of June. And yet one more is the sea of upturned, smiling faces which on all sides greet the eye. Happy is the young lady who can get an invitation to this most brilliant and fashionable of exhibitions, and some come hundreds of miles for the purpose! And happier yet is the hero of the Wooden Spoon, holding in his hand not the honors of scholarship, but the one high social honor which the class by one consent confers upon its most genial member. And the Wooden Spoon itself

"Hail! with joyful songs we meet thee!
Grace and beauty smiling greet thee!
Peerless boon!

Fadeless laurel-wreaths entwine thee,
And a thousand hearts enshrine thee,
Wooden spoon!"

The Promenade Concert, given on Monday evening by the band engaged for the Wooden Spoon and Presentation, has lately become a signal feature of the week; and not less so is the serenade given by the same band on Tuesday evening, after the Wooden Spoon is over. The rich music floating through the foliage of the elms and into the open windows of dreaming students at the solemn hour of one is most enchanting. I know of no words in the language which so fully convey to the memory the impressions of such music as these from the pen of Percival. They are an imitation of Goethe's Night-Song:

"What sound of midnight music

Comes stealing on my ear?
How sweet, and oh! how holy,
The solemn strain I hear!

"How sweet, and oh! how holy,
It echoes far and near,
As if an angel warbled
The solemn strain I hear.

"As if an angel warbled

From out the highest sphere;
Sure mortal could not utter
The solemn strain I hear.
"Sure mortal could not utter
A song so soft and clear;
Oh! might it ever linger,

The solemn strain I hear.
"Oh! might it ever linger,

Thus breathing in my ear,
That sound of midnight music,
The solemn strain I hear."

The remainder of the week is hardly changed from the ordinary routine of university life. The Freshmen and Juniors resume their studies, feeling newly elated by their advance in rank; the Sophomores are busy preparing for their first biennial paper; and the Seniors are resting their jaded spirits, visiting the city with their lady friends, or getting ready for the final exercises of Presentation on Friday afternoon. This is the speaking of the Townsend prize essays for the De Forest gold medal; and this is the highest merely literary honor which alma mater has to offer. The essays are usually well written, and the speaking is much better than is found upon the Commencement stage. The audience is intellectual, attentive, critical. In the view of undergraduates, with whom there is ever a tendency to undervalue the benefits of the drudgery of scholarship, the De Forest medal man is the most promising of his class; and in the race of life it has been proved again and again that he outstrips the hard-working valedictorian. Another feature of Friday (it was so in my time) is the posting of the Commencement appointments, fresh from the Senior Tutor's hands and in the familiar handwriting of the President, upon the side-posts of the old Lyceum. I fancy the prospective valedictorian is up earlier than usual this morning, taking a peep in the early twilight at the paper which decides his own and the rank of his class; nor is he the only one; and many another is late at prayers that morning to see how the class have turned out. If six hearts throb with emotion during the delivery of the Townsends, I know a hundred are quite as agitated while the eyes glance down this irreversible list.

I have not yet quite exhausted the amusements of the week. On Thursday afternoon there is usually a boat-race for the coming university regatta; and since the gymnasium has made such demands upon physical strength, there are often on Friday or Saturday evenings the annual exhibition of gymnastic feats. It is always largely attended, and the performances are often exceedingly difficult and amusing.

Thus ends Presentation Week. It offers a sharp contrast to the more outward festivities of Commencement, is more peculiar, more characteristic, is entered into more heartily by undergraduates, and is rapidly becoming in the eyes of strangers the chief collegiate festival of the year. The two are as different as two literary festivals can be. The alumnus would by no means miss Commencement; nor would the student any the less miss the keen wit and rich amusement, and the turning of college inside out, which Presentation with its associate festivals affords. Each have their place; neither can be spared. Let alma mater cherish each with assiduous care, ever remembering to root out kindly what is only bad, and to foster all that ministers to simple enjoyment and refreshes the spirits of restless youth.

THE WEDDING.

SUMMER day, shake down your light, And flood the chancel where they wed! Come, summer night, with moon and star, Your softer splendors softlier shed!

O summer surf of summer sea,

Fill all the night with low replies! Come wandering winds from wandering waves, And breathe their drowsy melodies!

O summer dawn, all tenderly

With amber fires break up the night! Come tardily, O summer sun,

And blush to bring thy ruder light'

O summer month, with fiercer heat

Choke down the cannon's warring words! Come, murmuring maize, and whispering wheat, And peaceful flutes of summer birds!

O summer seasons long delayed,

Nurse choicer fires in yonder blue! Come, fruitful years! Hence, grief and tears! God bless the beautiful and true!

I

AUNT THORNEYPINE.

AM sure I often wish that I were not related to or acquainted with Aunt Thorneypine. In my early and virtuous youth I remember being properly shocked at people who were accustomed coolly to state in my presence that they disliked their relations. A little more cognizance of the ways of this extraordinary world has induced me to think that possibly it might not be difficult to say something even in favor of such sinners.

Aunt Thorneypine is not of these. She must love her entire (and very large) family connection with an impartial and intense affection, if we judge from the manner in which she bestows her society upon them. Her youngest niece, who married a clergyman and went to Ohio, receives almost as many visits from her as her two nephews who live respectively in Washington and Philadelphia; and those of her kin who reside in Boston and New York can not complain of being neglected by the old lady. Why do I call her old? If any body ever set Time at defiance it was our stout, healthy, eternally-middle-aged Aunt Thorneypine.

Where was Uncle Thorneypine? He was dead. Two years of marriage had, a great while ago, been the death of him. Where were her two sons? Gone to sea from their earliest youth. Nobody ever heard much about them. Aunt Thorneypine lived on a very handsome annuity, and her means and time were her own. She seemed to have within her the spirit of a female Wandering Jew. Perambulation appeared to be a leading passion in her composition. I never knew her to remain for two consecutive winters in the same boarding-house or hotel (for Aunt Thorneypine abominated housekeeping), or even much in the same city. "Why should

I take a house," our dear aunt would ask, "when there are so many kind friends ever ready to receive me?"

This remark was based on a fallacy. So far from being always ready to receive our aunt, we were sometimes most particularly unready. As she was a person who commonly consulted her own convenience in most matters, the times and seasons of her visitations depended upon things with which we had nothing to do. Aunt Thorneypine was like Encke's or Biela's comet-certain to come again, though the precise period of her arrival was not decided on. One thing was a fixed fact-times of joy and sorrow inevitably brought our aunt to us. She was as punetual at funerals and on sad occasions as she was at christenings and weddings; and it never seemed to occur to her that when a family is plunged into mourning by the loss of one of its members, or when a wedding is to take away another, the presence of a self-invited guest, even a relative, is very often a great nuisance.

Of all her relations Aunt Thorneypine was, with the exception of one or two, the best provided with pecuniary resources. But then she would remark that her means were limited enough for all she had to do. And when you consider the immense distances she traveled, and the number of hobbies on which, one after another, she generally mounted, perhaps this was so. I know that she sometimes gave money to societies and charities, which I thought would have been better bestowed on some of her own kith and kin. As in all large families, there were in ours some unfortunates with whom the world had not gone very well. Aunt Thorneypine often comes to stay with our cousin Lucy Anne, who is a widow with four boys to bring up; and I must say it fills me with indignation to hear our dear aunt holding forth about industrial societies, etc., etc., while those poor little fellows sit there with threadbare jackets, and their mother's features are worn with exertion and anxiety.

Aunt Thorneypine is a most indefatigable beg gar for charities and general benevolences. Her pocket is usually well provided with concert tickets, subscription lists, and long appeals from those who want assistance; and she commonly has a set of pets and protégés who are often (I must say) selected with very little judgment. I have once or twice been very thoroughly deceived by people she recommended, and in future shall beware of the same. Aunt Thorneypine's method with a popular or fashionable charity was this: She modestly subscribed a very insignificant sum herself, and then, setting out on a general tour among her friends, she dunned and tormented them until even the hardest-hearted were ashamed, and gave something to be rid of her. On the soft-hearted she had no mercy, but ruthlessly picked their pockets of all they could give. She had a real passion for getting other people to bestow their money and time as it suited her. After Aunt Thorneypine had brought in a large amount it was usually entered in some newspaper or magazine list

as "Ladies of

through Mrs. Thorneypine." | the children. This was not the case with us. Aunt Thorneypine's magic powers were limited exclusively to her own performances. I never knew her match for setting herself on fire-breaking windows, mirrors, and tumblers—losing her trunk, her watch, or her keys, and upsetting tea,

And she got a good deal of credit in this way. Last winter Aunt Thorneypine sent me a basket made of shells (hideously ugly), which was the work of one of her protégées, and cost fifty dollars, with a note requesting that I would purchase it from the bearer, who was a most re-chocolate, coffee, butter, and ink, over the richspectable person, and wanted to raise three hundred dollars toward her rent. I sent the woman and the elegant corbeille about their business, and wrote a note to my dear aunt, in which I stated that whatever I had to spare was for poor Lucy Anne and her large family, who had been going through a winter of illness, and that I should be very grateful if Aunt Thorneypine could do something for her niece. I never received any answer to this note; but Aunt Thorneypine always says, when poor Lucy Anne is mentioned, that she was very foolish to marry a struggling physician, and what can she expect? Poor Lucy Anne! certainly not very much. Little from the world, and nothing from Aunt Thorneypine.

Aunt generally came two or three times a year to visit us, a large family consisting of father, mother, and eight children. As I mentioned, her arrival was frequently both unexpected and inconvenient. My father, an amiable, kind-hearted man, often gently attempted to fix our aunt to particular periods of time. For instance, he would invite her to visit us in the month of February. In return Aunt Thorneypine would write a long letter describing her engagements, and declining his invitation. She would appoint the month of April as the season for making a sojourn with us, and generally she kept her word.

The reason why Aunt Thorneypine demanded and received such homage from her relations was, that when a young girl she had for a year or two had the care of her nine brothers and sisters. A great many people have had the same, and never thought of demanding eternal payment for such a debt; but Aunt Thorneypine seemed to feel that, do what we would, she never could be requited.

The experience of life generally goes against modest merit. He who grasps at more than his share is more likely to find that others make way for him in the end than the over-modest man is to obtain what he actually merits. I don't know that our aunt ever reasoned in this way; but she instinctively acted in such a manner as to prove that my view is correct. Somehow nobody could, would, or might resist Aunt Thorneypine.

est carpets. During one of her six weeks' visits she generally managed to leave the mark of her chair by the fire in a worn-out place in the carpet aforesaid; and she was commonly fatal to sofa springs and fancy straw chairs. Wherever she staid the servants soon found that the principal part of their duty was waiting upon Aunt Thorneypine. It made no difference whether it was at Cousin Oliver's in Boston, where they had six servants and a carriage and horses, or at Cousin Mary's in L, where they kept only two domestics; they all had to wait on her.

As her brothers and sisters died in the regular course of nature Aunt Thorneypine transferred her attentions to their children, and seemed "par droit de conquête ou par droit de naissance," to be as inevitable as death, taxation, or our own national debt. Nor need you suppose that any thing but warm, cheerful rooms, an excellent table, and constant attention can be agreeable to our darling aunt. She is an admirable judge of most things; and if your butcher fails to give you the best of every thing, he will be detected and exposed in the gentlest manner by our aunt. She is by nature a critic, and you had better not attempt to put her off with second-rate articles of any kind.

Our aunt was never behindhand in expressing a proper sense of the attentions which we have all shown her for so many years. She is in the habit of making to all the family presents in turn, chiefly of her own work; and the indisposition which we all had to receive these gifts shows what a high-minded family we universally were. She sent Cousin Mary, on her last birthday, a pink and green knitted worsted nubie, and a large, old-fashioned rotary cooking stove, which she had once taken for a debt. Poor Mary, who lived in a tiny baby-house of a dwelling, was driven nearly to madness by the presence of this huge interloper where he clearly was not needed. And her husband, a waggish clergyman, quoted, with shouts of laughter, “ Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes," as he told his dismayed and puzzled wife that this was the first time he ever thought her Aunt Thorneypine was a Greek.

I never shall forget an incident of my childhood, which has made an ineffaceable impression. It was the last night of April. My father was to give up his house on the ensuing day; and the family, after looking at denuded rooms, packing-cases full of furniture, and crates full of china, were about to retire at ten o'clock sufficiently fatigued, as may be supposed, when such a ringing was heard at the bell as threatened to de

Perhaps you might like to know some of those pleasing traits in Aunt Thorneypine's character which so endeared her to her friends. Among other things, she might be said to have what an ignorant phrenologist once called the organ of casualty in a high degree. One of Tieck's German stories is about a lady called Die Federtante-molish that article, and the maid in alarm, flyAnglice, "Aunt Feathers"-so named from the plumes she generally wore, whose arrival in a family seemed to produce fits of illness among

ing to the bell, discovered Aunt Thorneypine, upheld in the arms of two stout gentlemen of Irish persuasion. Having set out unexpectedly

on a visit to us she had broken her leg en route, and here she was, a spectacle for a good Samaritan. I never shall forget that weariful night; fires were made and beds put up; doctors were run after and dragged from comfortable homes, and it was evident on every side that some great calamity had befallen a generally peaceful and unobtrusive family. Aunt Thorneypine and her broken leg on this occasion only staid with us a week, and at the end of that time we completed our "moving," two of the servants having meanwhile given warning.

If such were my early experiences of my dear aunt, what were my later ones, when, my parents being dead, and the family dispersed, I had the pleasure of receiving her in my own house! By one of those freaks of fortune which sometimes occur, I had married a young man whose mother had been a niece, not of aunt but of uncle Thorneypine. "By this double connection, my dear Grizel," my kind relative would say, "I feel more strongly bound to you both than ever." Indeed the good lady much prefers our house to most others in the family connection. I think that no one of our cousins is more favored than ourselves, except Cousin Oliver, who lives in Boston, and keeps his carriage and horses. His wife, I have often thought, would like to rout Aunt Thorneypine when she comes as the invader of her hearth, but being a timid, delicate little woman, she is afraid of getting the worst of it.

I never can sit in my own parlor when Aunt Thorneypine comes. The servants are exasperated beyond what their always admirable tempers can quite bear by the number of callers. On one occasion the door-bell rang forty times in one day, and in consequence of this overwhelming fact the waitress, a young lady of sensitive feelings, retired into the kitchen and burst into tears. Aunt Thorneypine always has a perfect levée of people that I don't know. Charitable agents, doctors, public lecturers, people that have property to sell, beggars (rich and poor), and "citizens generally," as the newspapers say when describing the rear of a procession. This sort of thing goes on from morning until night, and is, as may be supposed, far from pleasant. I generally run away, nor am I missed by Aunt Thorneypine, who is unceremonious herself, and don't notice whether other people are so or not. The last time but one that she came to us, we were surprised by breakfast-time coming without our aunt. We rang bells repeatedly, but still she came not. It was Sunday morning, and aunt was generally regular at church; so in considerable alarm Horace and I hastened to her room, and he remarked, chemin faisant, that if any thing had happened to the poor old lady I should regard my many sarcasms with respect to her with much remorse. We knocked at the door on the outside, and Aunt Thorneypine on the inside (showing that at any rate she was not dead), and Horace, having bawled through the keyhole to know what was the matter, our aunt bawled back again

(through the same aperture) that she was locked in. And so she was. The lock was hopelessly damaged, and it was not until some hours after that we were able, by breaking open the door, to release our dear relative from her retirement, so well had she taken herself prisoner. Aunt is also perfectly incorrigible as to dinner hours; she somehow never notices how she keeps people waiting. However, she always has so many engagements and appointments with people that I suppose this is the reason that she is hardly ever up to time.

It is quite impossible to narrate all the remarkable adventures our aunt has had while staying with us. Once she came (as usual unexpectedly), and found us quite crowded with company. They happened to be formally invited guests, who could not be put in the garret, though Aunt Thorneypine looked (I thought) as if she would like to send them there. We hurried the three children out of the nursery, and sent them into the attic (where they caught three bad colds), and placed Aunt Thorneypine on a light single bed in their room. Thus having provided for every one's comfort as well as we could, Horace and I withdrew to our own quarters. At the witching hour of night-whatever that is—I heard a very loud sound, followed, after a few instants, by a still deeper but more distant report. Then all was silence. Horace slept. Trembling like a leaf, I partially dressed, and going into the passage, I found several of the family assembled and all in alarm. husband, by this time aroused, shouted "Fire!" "Thieves!" and "Police!" And at first I really thought robbers were breaking in, when on going down stairs the truth came out. Aunt Thorneypine had broken down her bed and brought down a portion of the parlor ceiling. We had a general laugh, in which Aunt Thorneypine good-humoredly joined, while she told me she was surprised at my putting a woman of her size in so light a bedstead.

My

I won't mention all the various difficulties into which I had been led, chiefly through the agency of Aunt Thorneypine. How she brought a poor child to the house in order to give her some old clothes, who was just recovering from scarlet-fever, thereby making a present of the disease to my three children; how she once fell through a street grating, sprained her ankle, and was brought home by several policemen, to the great amazement of the neighbors; how she left the house-door open, whereby a silver teapot disappeared from the dining-room “and no questions asked;" how she used to leave the Croton water running, and forgot to turn off the gas; how she borrowed a volume of his splendidly-bound English Poets from Horace, which in our aunt's various wanderings must have found another home, for it never came back to ours; how she was always asking for postage-stamps, which she invariably forgot to return, and likewise omnibus change; how she would sometimes arise at midnight and desire toast and tea to be prepared-these, and many other feats of

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