Ars Recte Vivendi | Page 3

money and heap up luxury in vain. The

simplicity and good sense of wealth will conquer its ostentation and
reckless waste.
(October, 1886)

BRAINS AND BRAWN
It is towards the end of June and in the first days of July that the great
college aquatic contests occur, and it is about that time, as the soldiers
at Monmouth knew in 1778, that Sirius is lord of the ascendant. This
year it was the hottest day of the summer, as marked by the mercury in
New York, when the Harvard and Yale men drew out at New London
for their race. Fifty years ago the crowd at Commencement filled the
town green and streets, and the meeting-house in which the graduating
class were the heroes of the hour. The valedictorian, the salutatorian,
the philosophical orator, walked on air, and the halo of after-triumphs
of many kinds was not brighter or more intoxicating than the brief
glory of the moment on which they took the graduating stage, under the
beaming eyes of maiden beauty and the profound admiration of college
comrades.
Willis, as Phil Slingsby, has told the story of that college life fifty and
sixty years ago. The collegian danced and drove and flirted and dined
and sang the night away. Robert Tomes echoed the strain in his tale of
college life a little later, under stricter social and ecclesiastical
conditions. There was a more serious vein also. In 1827 the Kappa
Alpha Society was the first of the younger brood of the Greek
alphabet--descendants of the Phi Beta Kappa of 1781--and in 1832
Father Eells, as he is affectionately called, founded Alpha Delta Phi, a
brotherhood based upon other aims and sympathies than those of Mr.
Philip Slingsby, but one which appealed instantly to clever men in
college, and has not ceased to attract them to this happy hour, as the
Easy Chair has just now commemorated.
But neither in the sketches of Slingsby nor in the memories of those
Commencement triumphs is there any record of an absorbing and
universal and overpowering enthusiasm such as attends the modern
college boat-race. The race of this year between the two great New
England universities, Harvard and Yale--the Crimson and the
Blue--was a twilight contest, for "high-water," says the careful
chronicler, "did not occur until seven o'clock." At half-past six he

describes the coming of the grand armada and the expectant scene in
these words: "The Block Island came down from Norwich with every
square foot of her three decks occupied, the Elm City brought a mass of
Yale sympathizers from New Haven, and the big City of New York
filled her long saloon-deck with New London spectators. A special
train of eighteen cars came up from New Haven, a blue flag fluttering
from every window. The striking contrast to the life and bustle of the
lower end of the course was the quiet river at the starting-point. The
college launches, the huge tug America, the press-boat Manhasset,
loaded with correspondents, the tug Burnside, swathed in crimson by
her charter party of Harvard men, and the steam-yacht Norma, gay with
party-colored bunting, floated idly up-stream, waiting for the start. The
long train of twenty-five observation-cars stood quietly by the
river-side, its occupants closely watching the boat-houses across the
river."
Did any fleet of steamers solid with eager spectators, or special train of
eighteen cars, or long train of twenty-five observation-cars, a vast,
enthusiastic multitude, ever arrive at any college upon any
Commencement Day in Philip Slingsby's time to greet with prolonged
roars of cheers and frenzied excitement the surpassing eloquence of
Salutatorian Smith, or the melting pathos of Valedictorian Jones? Did
ever--for so we read in the veracious history of a day, the
newspaper--did ever a college town resound with "a perfect babel of
noises" from eight in the summer evening until three in the summer
morning, the town lighted with burning tar-barrels and blazing with
fireworks, the chimes ringing, and ten thousand people hastening to the
illuminated station to receive the victors in triumph--because Brown
had vanquished the calculus, or Jones discovered a comet, or Robinson
translated the Daily Gong and Gas Blower into the purest Choctaw? In
a word, was such tumult of acclamation--even the President himself
swinging his reverend hat, and the illustrious alumni, far and near,
when the glad tidings were told, beaming with joyful complacency, like
Mr. Pickwick going down the slide, while Samivel Weller adjured him
and the company to keep the pot a-bilin'--ever produced by any
scholastic performance or success or triumph whatever?
Echo undoubtedly answers No; and she asks, also, whether in such a
competition, when the appeal is to youth, eager, strong, combative, full

of physical impulse and prowess, in the time of romantic enjoyment
and heroic susceptibility, study is not heavily handicapped, and books