The Undergraduate Chair
Hanover weather was not at all disappointing in its failure to show any determination through these last few fortnights. The curious succession of rains, snows, and balmy days without which Hanover would not be Hanover persisted. Slushy walks, slickers, and muddy ski boots alternated with baseball bats and golf clubs. However, by the end of the month all this wintry apparatus seemed a thing of the past, and the exodus was made exulting. Indeed, March compensated royally for its persistent inclemency by rushing and cleaning the must from a rather dreary town with a few days of sunlight and brisk breezes. Already the corps of about-to-be engineers had dragged out their instruments and set them up here, there, and all over the campus. Baseball and lacrosse teams skidded happily about, and all seemed fair and warmer.
To the uninitiates, Spring was just across the threshold; great rows of picket fences were being strung about walks, men spaded industriously at hopeless plots of ground— it couldn't be far away! Even the suspicious undertones of older, experience-wise people took on an optimistic note. The first day after the recess justified any extreme to which their pessimism might have taken them. A heavy snowfall, which began as an innocent enough flurry, covered the promising, almost-green landscape to a sticky depth, thereby giving our long-faced weathermongers every opportunity to vend their wares. One sometimes wonders what would happen to Hanover conversationally during this period were it not for the consistent vacillations of the weather. Breakfast would no longer be a time for stamping feet and shaking coats—with the laying aside of all the time-worn imprecations, table-talk would become a temporarily lost art, and the claim which has so long been held, that Dartmouth men speak more authoritatively, well, and at greater length on the weather than the average barometer, would have to be put aside. However, the snow served one very definite purpose—it dulled the edge of the Bermudian sagas which could almost literally be seen to drip from many a tanned lip. Looked at in that way, it was the visitation of a thoughtful Providence. . . . However, at the time of writing, buds have already begun to pop, and the campus has acquired that greenness which remains on and on until the snow comes to cover it again.
Hanover once again settles down to the routine of college life, but now that the dread Hour Exam Era has past, studies are done on the weekend compensation basis. From a vantage point on South Main Street it is a truly inspiring sight to see the legions of Dartmouth's fittest sally forth to do battle and what-not at points East, North, South, and West. Of course, Monday one learns that it has been merely a case of balancing one's life up here. The Dartmouth, with characteristic solicitude, comments editorially on the peerade phase:
"There will be many wearers of the Green off to hotels this vacation and after. Hotels in Bermuda, in Montreal, in New York, in Boston, in Florida, and in Pinehurst. They will find in many of these centers of American culture and criticism an unvoiced assumption that the generic Dartmouth gentleman is a roguish, rakish hell-bent-for-affection sort of fellow with all the manly virtues and not a few of the more virile peculations that go to make up the finished citizen of the world. This axiom means a lot to us. There is a pleasure in it that emanates only from undeserved praise. . . .
"Nothing is less susceptible to scrutiny than reputation. Put to the test, the savoir faire, savoir dire of the hardiest drollo in our midst would be hard put to it to approach this standard of imperfection. We can't attempt to be Casanovas without certain detection. And once let the folk of the watering-places get wind of our being neither more nor less than pretty average fellows whose urges are no more picaresque than the norm, we sink in the eyes of the world.
"Our only hope is to be ourselves and circulate the impression that we have put on the pretense of being gentlemen from sheer surfeit with the things of this world. After all, we owe it to coming generations of Dartmouth men to preserve the world's illusion concerning them. We must save them their birthright;. We can't eat a mess of pottage and have it too."
However, the dread shadow of comprehensives and finals is slowly dropping over the college, and out-of-town social activities are being curtailed in proportion as the first of June approaches. The reading period, which the faculty again granted this year in view of its apparent success last February, seems not at all to produce the pernicious effect which was lugubriously anticipated by those who have opposed it, that of promoting the weekend spirit and more and longer hegiras in the few weeks just preceding the examination period. Instead, it seems to have made the college at large final-conscious, if you will, and to have created a definite expansion of the academic imagination and ambition.
