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striking feature is the great memorial window, at the western end of the hall. The window symbolizes Christian Learning, and is executed in the manner of the fourteenth century.

It should be added that only the Swann bequest, and a portion of the Wyman legacy, and of the Procter gift have been expended on buildings. The large bulk of these gifts is reserved for fellowships, scholarships, and professorships.

X

THE COLLEGE SEASONS

The Communal Spirit of Dormitory Life. The Spirit of Organization. "Horsing." Opening of the College Year. The Halls. Senior Elections. Cane Spree. Football. The College in Midwinter. Midyear Examinations. The College at Work. Washington's Birthday. The Club Elections. College Expenses. Democracy. The Spring Term. Senior Singing. Commencement.

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It may be hard, as President Wilson confessed in 1905 in what is one of the most successful of the many efforts to describe the elusive spirit of the Princeton campus,1 to say whether the free comradeship and democracy of the life led amid the surroundings and associations alluded to in preceding chapters are cause or effect in relation to the influences which have made Princeton what it is. Nevertheless, there can be but little question that the conditions of that life, especially in its residential features-where each man has his own abode, yet shares as member of one great family in all the minor daily intimacies of hundreds living like himself; where he has but to step outdoors to find himself in pleasant gardens and never a trespasser or stranger; where he may stand beneath friends' windows and, unafraid of artificial etiquette, call up in the careless campus fashion, or may enter dozens of rooms whose doors are never locked nor their tobacco jars emptythere can be little question that the democracy of Princeton has been nurtured by the communal quality of the

1 J. R. Williams, "Handbook of Princeton, with an Introduction by Woodrow Wilson,” N. Y., 1905, p. xiv, etc.

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dormitory system. "It is this community of feeling and action," wrote President Wilson in the description alluded to, "this sense of close comradeship among the undergraduates not only, but also between the undergraduates and the faculty, that constitutes the spirit of the place and makes its ideals and aspirations part of thought and action. It naturally follows, too, that graduates never feel their connection with the place and its life entirely broken, but return again and again to renew their old associations, and are consulted at every critical turn in its affairs. Such comradeship in affairs, moreover, breeds democracy inevitably. Democracy, the absence of social distinctions, the treatment of every man according to his merits, his most serviceable qualities, and most likable traits, is of the essence of such a place, its most cherished characteristic. The spirit of the place, therefore, is to be found in no one place or trait or organization; neither in its classrooms nor on its campus, but in its life as a whole. . . . It lives and grows by comradeship and community of thought; that constitutes its charm; binds the spirit of its sons to it with a devotion at once ideal and touched with passion; takes hold of the imagination even of the casual visitor, if he have the good fortune to see a little way beneath the surface; dominates its growth and progress; determines its future. The most careless and thoughtless undergraduate breathes and is governed by it. It is the genius of the place."

If it is hard to express in set terms the spirit of the Princeton campus, it is almost impossible to describe in any satisfactory way the life which that spirit permeates. The spirit is nothing new, it lurks between the lines of the 1786 diary and even in the letters and reminiscences of Leland. But the life, in all save its

5

dormitory characteristics, has changed. The eighteenthcentury collegian's misadventures in Tarkington's "Cherry" belong, of course, to a totally vanished age. The Princeton of the forties and fifties, as known to "His Majesty Myself "2 or to "Mr. Christopher Katydid," is unrecognizable to the twentieth-century collegian. The life which "A Princetonian "led in the early nineties seems curiously remote from that led but lately by "Deering at Princeton." Even the "Princeton Stories," treating though they do of types and therefore more likely to be permanently true to campus life than specific scenes and incidents in a novel, nevertheless contain numerous details which the modern undergraduate does not comprehend; and they cannot reflect the latter-day complexity. But running through all these portrayals of Princeton, uneven though they are in quality, and differing in their setting, beside the never failing note of eager irrepressible youth, is also that of a communal democratic existence, the note of the Princeton dormitory life. In this closing chapter then no attempt shall be made to describe the day-to-day pursuits of the average modern undergraduate; they vary with each college generation. It is proposed merely to notice some of the more distinctive features of the life he takes part in, and to touch upon a few of the elements that enter into the composition of its spirit.

Time was when the campus settled itself, after Commencement Day, for a three months' drowse which was

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broken only by the chatter of Hibernian charwomen in the buildings and the rat-a-plan of carpet beaters under the trees. In still remoter days there were usually a few students from the far south or southwest who spent the vacation in Princeton because of the expense of transportation to their homes or because of the pleasanter climate of the north. The vacuum cleaner has done away with the carpet beater, and the lonely student on vacation has given place to student workers on the College farm, to members of the faculty trying to catch up with private work, and to backward entering men and undergraduates preparing to remove conditions at the examination set for the last week or two of the long vacation. Dormitories are closed, but the libraries, museums, and laboratories remain open; the University tennis courts are kept in use; and the campus is no longer quite deserted during the summer. Then one day suddenly the town begins to fill up, the local stores and markets freshen their displays, official announcements appear on University bulletin boards, and on a certain September afternoon the College bell breaks forth into unwonted clamor as if eager to resume its duties; an academic procession files out of Nassau Hall on its way to Marquand Chapel, and the opening exercises of the hundred and sixty-oddth year; and a huge piece of machinery starts into life again. For, as may be readily supposed, the chief difference between the life of the campus to-day and the life of earlier times, or even of twenty-five years ago, is the complexity and highly developed organization of the present, as compared with the former monotonous simplicity. The daily routine used to consist of an ever recurring round of attendance at chapel, recitation, and refectory, ushered in by a rising bell at one end of the day and closed by curfew at the other, with two or