CHAP. VII - VARIOUS

Summary

If I were giving a complete natural history of the genus undergraduate, I should still have many subvarieties to describe. I should have, for example, to depict the extreme High Churchman, of whom a few choice specimens still linger amongst us. Certain annual ceremonies plunge our townsmen into a frenzy, which seeks relief by denouncing the Scarlet Woman in the local journals. Not very long ago a youth opened an “oratory” in his rooms. For this pious purpose he selected his “gyp-room,” a small apartment generally consecrated to pots and pans, decanters, and slop-pails. In it he erected an altar, decked with the due amount of candles and flowers, and opened it with a solemn procession, headed by certain weak-minded University officials. Of course, he was put down. Tomfoolery of this kind thrives ill in our soil. We prefer, of the two, the more manly, if less refined, evangelical fanaticism. Overzealous youths preach open-air sermons, or invite the University at large to “prayer meetings conducted by undergraduates.” I should be sorry to speak of these well-meant efforts, because I could not describe them in the simplest terms without making them ridiculous. They make but little impression, too, on the dogged common sense of the ordinary undergraduate. Their worst effect is that they lead him to class all rather eccentric religious manifestations under the head (I apologize for quoting his rather inelegant slang) of “awful bosh.”