ch.... And then it was there was introduced the more questionable
practice of planting class trees too delicate to bear the college
course. Although a foolish little bird built her nest and laid
her eggs in the golden-leaved evergreen of '79, and although a
much handsomer nest with a very much larger egg appeared immediately
in the Retinospora Precipera Aurea of '80, yet the rival 'nymphs
with golden hair' were both soon forced to forsake their withered
tenements; Mr. Hunnewell's exotics, after another trial or two,
being succeeded by plebeian hemlocks."

The true story of the Wellesley spade and how it came to be handed
down from class to class, is recorded in Florence Morse Kingsley's
diary, where we learn how the "burly instrument" of 1877 was
succeeded by a less unwieldy and more ladylike utensil. Under
the date, April 3, 1878, we find:

Our class (the class of '81) had a meeting last night.
We held it in one of the laboratories on the fifth floor,
quite in secret, for we didn't want the '80 girls to find it
out. The class of '80 is thought to be extraordinarily brilliant,
and they certainly do look down on us freshmen in haughty
disdain as being correspondingly stupid. I don't say very
much against them, since I---- is an '80 girl: besides,
if I work hard I can graduate with '80, but at present my
lot is cast with '81. We have decided to have a tree planting,
and it is to be entirely original and the first of a series.
Mr. Durant has given a Japanese Golden Evergreen to '79 and
one to '80. They are precisely alike and they had been planted
for quite a while before he thought of turning them into class
trees. We heard a dark rumor yesterday to the effect that
Mr. Durant is intending to plant another evergreen under the
library window and present it to us. But we voted to forestall
his generosity. We mean to have an elm, and we want to plant
it out in front of the college, in the center or just on the
other side of the driveway. The burning question remained
as to who should acquaint Mr. Durant with our valuable ideas.
Nobody seemed ravenously eager for the job, and finally I was
nominated. "You know him better than we do," they all said,
so I finally consented. I haven't a ghost of an idea what to
say; for when one comes to think of it, it is rather ungrateful
of '81 not to want the evergreen under th