6
TEE HESPERIAN
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tlieso qualities, and hnvo exorcised them in
an extraordinary degree We anticipate
therefore nothing less than a year of success
ful effort, which will bring to each and all
of you tho pleasure which conies with ad
vancement and growth in capacity and
power.
In all this let us aid you all wo can. Let
tho relations between instructors and in
structed bo marked, as heretofore, by confi
dence, esteem and hearty good-will. The
year will pass all to quickly. At its close
it will be well indeed if each of us can say,
"I have done what I could."
James H. Canfield.
WHAT YOU WILL.
The most pitiable of all human beings
under the sun, more pitiable than Russian
washer-women or college journalists, is (ho
new student. Ho is pitiable because every
body is under contract to bore him, and he
is more pitiable becjmso he is constitution
ally obliged to boro himself. The effusive
welcome of a thousand or more people on
the ground that he is a now student and his
name will help out tho catalogue, is enough
of a burden. But the worst of it all is that
ho is new. His clothes are new, his shoes
are new, his hat is new, he is all new, and
uncomfortable. Even his name takes on an
unknown sound and he wishes that someone
would call him Jim or Joe or Charlie instead
of that strange, queer name, Mr. He's
hardly ever heard that name before aud he
doesn't know whether it is his or not. He
hasn't come for glory, as if he were a senior.
He has come to learn, poor fellow. He de
sires to know what a cosine is, and a gerund
ive, and a co-ed, and the Chance, and Polly
Con, and Psych, and Lit, and Lab, and all
the other mysteries of our higher education.
Just think of all he'll know before the end
of tho year perhaps.
"Well, we'll not make fun of him much.
It is a time-honored custom that ho should
be joked a little. But deep down in our
hearts we have an admiration for him, be ho
over so now, provided ho does not wear kid
gloves and part his hair in tho middle. If
ho does that there's no hope for him. He'll
never bo anything but now though ho lives
to bo a senior and comes back to post.
They all como back to post, those now
alumni of ours, just as chickens come homo
to roost. When the world turns thom a cold
shoulder and all its shoulders are cold these
days when, in more euphonious English,
they can't find a job, then their hearts all
turn backward figuratively speaking to
these old halls and faces, where they know a
cold shoulder can't be turned to them; and
so they como. They are not new students.
There is a very unmistakable air about thom.
uYe rocks and crags and chimney stacks,
I'm witli you once again," is written in
every line of their beaming faces. They
know all the uProfs.," and where all tho
"Labs" are, and speak with utter compla
cency to the "Chance" or of him. They
take it easy, because, forsooth, they can,
which is the most human trait they ever ex
hibited. They don't have to think about
credit. They don't have to take conflicts
with their dinner hour. They can carry un
limited hpurs of bench work on the campus
and hall work in the hall. And they know
so much more than the rest of us. They
know it all except a great deal they have
forgotten and a little of tho higher mysteries
they have come back to fathom now.
There was one class in the University
which began its work long before anything
else was going. That was the class in bench
work out on the campus, the favorite study
of nearly everyone. They began work early
Monday morning the 17th, they kept it up
every hour of the day and some hours of tho
night. Their zeal never flagged. They put
in enough hours to carry them through, if
tho credit committee only saw it that way.
But wo wish to warn all new students against
those benches. They are the most demoral
izing thing, with the exception of chapel
hour, that there js on the campus. The