abstaining themselves for conscience' sake, to share in the plans, and sympathize without servility in the pleasures of their rich comrades? to look on with friendly interest, without cynicism or concealed malice, at the preparations in which they do not join? Or do they yield to selfishness, and gratify their own vanity, weakness, self-indulgence, and love of pleasure, at whatever cost to their parents? Or is there such a state of public opinion and usage in College, that this custom is equally honored in the breach and in the observance? When the feasting was over, the most picturesque part of the day began. The College green put off suddenly its antique gravity, and became "Embrouded ..... as it were a mede Alle ful of fresshe floures, white and rede," "floures" which to their gay hues and graceful outlines added the rare charm of fluttering in perpetual motion. It was a kaleidoscope without angles. To me, niched in the embrasure of an old upper window, the scene, it seemed, might have stepped out of the Oriental splendor of Arabian Nights. I never saw so many well-dressed people together in my life before. That seems a rather tame fact to buttress Arabian Nights withal, but it implies much. The distance was a little too great for one to note personal and individual beauty; but since I have heard that Boston is famous for its ugly women, perhaps that was an advantage, as diminishing likewise individual ugliness. If no one was strikingly handsome, no one was strikingly plain. And though you could not mark the delicacies of faces, you could have the full effect of costume,--rich, majestic, floating, gossamery, impalpable. Everything was fresh, spotless, and in tune. It scarcely needed music to resolve all the incessant waver and shimmer into a dance; but the music came, and, like sand-grains under the magnet, the beautiful atoms swept into stately shapes and tremulous measured activity,-- "A fine, sweet earthquake gently moved By the soft wind of whispering silks." Then it seemed like a German festival, and came back to me the Fatherland, the lovely season of the Blossoming, the short, sweet bliss-month among the Blumenbuhl Mountains. Nothing call be more appropriate, more harmonious, than dancing on the green. Youth, and gaiety, and beauty--and in summer we are all young, and gay, and beautiful--mingle well with the eternal youth of blue sky, and velvet sward, and the light breezes toying in the treetops. Youth and Nature kiss each other in the bright, clear purity of the happy summer-tide. Whatever objections lie against dancing elsewhere must veil their faces there.