, at an expense varying from fifty to
five hundred dollars,--to which he invites as many friends as he
chooses, or as are available. The banquet is quite as rich, varied, and
elegant as you find at ordinary evening parties, and the occasion is a
merry and pleasant one. But it occurred to me that there may be
unpleasant things connected with this custom. In a class of
seventy-five, in a country like America, it is quite probable that a
certain proportion are ill able to meet the expense which such a custom
necessitates. Some have fought their own way through college. Some must
have been fought through by their parents. To them I should think this
elaborate and considerable outlay must be a very sensible inconvenience.
The mere expense of books and board, tuition and clothing, cannot be met
without strict economy and much parental and family sacrifice. And at
the end of it all, when every nerve has been strained, and must be
strained harder still before the man can be considered fairly on his
feet and able to run his own race in life, comes this new call for
entirely uncollegiate disbursements. Of course it is only a custom.
There is no college by-law, I suppose, which prescribes a valedictory
_symposium_. Probably it grew up gradually from small ice-cream
beginnings to its present formidable proportions; but a custom is as
rigid as a chain. I wondered whether the moral character of the young
men was generally strong enough, by the time they were in their fourth
collegiate year, to enable them to go counter to the custom, if it
involved personal sacrifice at home,--whether there was generally
sufficient courtliness, not to say Christianity, in the class, whether
there was sufficient courtesy, chivalry, high-breeding, to make the
omission of this party-giving unnoticeable or not unpleasant. I by no
means say that the inability of a portion of the students to entertain
their friends sumptuously should prevent those who are able from doing
so. As the world is, some will be rich and some will be poor. This is a
fact which they have to face the moment they go out into the world; and
the sooner they grapple with it, and find out its real bearings and
worth or worthlessness, the better. Boys are usually old enough by the
time they are graduated to understand and take philosophically such a
distinction. Nor do I admit that poor people have any right to be sore
on the subject of their poverty. The one sensitiveness which I cannot
c