thoughtfully on the foot-rail of her iron bed; the dear, familiar
view blurs as she gazes out beyond the dormitory room and its
reminiscent treasures of program and photograph, out where the warm
light brightens the concrete pillars of the museum and the arboretum
with its waving tops, and makes the whole fair landscape one Field of
the Cloth of Gold.

The Encina student who has slaved his uneasy way, with no resources save
his willingness to do anything that may help him from one semester to
the next, springs exultantly from his alcove, for to-day he has finished
the struggle, and there is a good job waiting for him.

Over in the fraternity house, the man who has sung his grasshopper songs
in careless disregard of changing seasons, and who has found some
impossible examinations barring his primrose path, blinks painfully at
the merciless sun of Commencement Day, laughing at him above the roofs
of siren Mayfield, and holds his foolish head in his hands; for last
night, while the other Seniors, full of honors and regrets, were trying
to choke down a little of the good-bye supper after the Promenade, he
went a bit too far in celebrating his mixed emotions of grief at
flunking and joy at coming back again.

Upon all alike--upon him who has watched for it, dreading it through
four enchanted years, as upon him who has forgotten until the list of
candidates for graduation glared at him from the registrar's
bulletin-board with a vacancy in that section where his name ought to
be; upon him who has hoped for this as a commencement in very truth of
things great and new, as upon him who cares not--shines this early
sunlight of the last Wednesday in May.

There is never a cloud in the sky this morning; the meadow lark sings
more joyously than on any other day; the campus is more radiantly
beautiful, because some hundred and fifty people are looking at it
through tears for the last time.

* * * * *

On his own Commencement Day, Tom Ashley lay sleeping, hidden away from
the splendor of the morning, two-score miles from the smiling campus.

The man lying next him in the upper tier but one rolled over and shook
him by the shoulder:

"Wake up, Tom; it's Commencement Day! Don't you want your degree?"

The Senior struggled back from sleep; a dream influence lingered with
him, a vision of a cloistered enclosure, a dream in which all his
senses, now assailed by the sights and smells and sounds of a