The Courage of the Commonplace

The Courage of the
Commonplace

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Title: The Courage of the Commonplace
Author: Mary Raymond Shipley Andrews
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The Courage of the Commonplace
by Mary Raymond Shipley Andrews
The girl and her chaperon had been deposited early in the desirable
second-story window in Durfee, looking down on the tree. Brant was a
senior and a "Bones" man, and so had a leading part to play in the
afternoon's drama. He must get the girl and the chaperon off his hands,
and be at his business. This was "Tap Day." It is perhaps well to
explain what "Tap Day" means; there are people who have not been at
Yale or had sons or sweethearts there.
In New Haven, on the last Thursday of May, toward five in the
afternoon, one becomes aware that the sea of boys which ripples
always over the little city has condensed into a river flowing into the
campus. There the flood divides and re-divides; the junior class is
separating and gathering from all directions into a solid mass about the
nucleus of a large, low-hanging oak tree inside the college fence in
front of Durfee Hall. The three senior societies of Yale, Skull and
Bones, Scroll and Key, and Wolf's Head, choose to-day fifteen
members each from the junior class, the fifteen members of the
outgoing senior class making the choice. Each senior is allotted his man
of the juniors, and must find him in the crowd at the tree and tap him
on the shoulder and give him the order to go to his room. Followed by
his sponsor he obeys and what happens at the room no one but the men
of the society know. With shining face the lad comes back later and is
slapped on the shoulder and told, "good work, old man," cordially and

whole-heartedly by every friend and acquaintance--by lads who have
"made" every honor possible, by lads who have "made" nothing, just as
heartily. For that is the spirit of Yale.
Only juniors room in Durfee Hall. On Tap Day an outsider is lucky
who has a friend there, for a window is a proscenium box for the
play--the play which is a tragedy to all but forty-five of the three
hundred and odd juniors. The windows of every story of the gray stone
facade are crowded with a deeply interested audience; grizzled heads of
old graduates mix with flowery hats of women; every one is watching
every detail, every arrival. In front of the Hall is a drive, and room for
perhaps a dozen carriages next the fence--the famous fence of
Yale--which rails the campus round. Just inside it, at the north-east
corner, rises the tree. People stand up in the carriages, women and men;
the fence is loaded with people, often standing, too, to see that tree.
All over the campus surges a crowd; students of the other classes,
seniors who last year stood in the compact gathering at the tree and left
it sore-hearted, not having been "taken"; sophomores who will stand
there next year, who already are hoping for and dreading their Tap Day;
little freshmen, each one sure that he, at least, will be of the elect; and
again the iron-gray heads, the interested faces of old Yale men, and the
gay spring hats like bouquets of flowers.
It is, perhaps, the most critical single day of the four years' course at the
University. It shows to the world whether or no a boy,