The Courage of the CommonplaceAndrews, Mary Raymond Shipman
General
The Courage of the Commonplace
Andrews, Mary Raymond Shipman
Yale University -- Fiction
The amphitheatre of Yale Field is packed with more than ten
thousand. The seniors are there with their mothers and fathers,
their pretty little sisters and their proud little brothers--the
flower of the country. One looks about and sees everywhere
high-bred faces, strong faces, open-eyed, drinking in this
extraordinary scene. For there is nothing just like it elsewhere.
Across the field where hundreds of automobiles and carriages are
drawn close--beyond that is a gate-way, and through this, at
three o'clock or so, comes pouring a rainbow. A gigantic,
light-filled, motion-swept rainbow of men. The first rays
of vivid color resolve into a hundred Japanese geishas; they
come dancing, waving paper umbrellas down Yale Field; on their
heels press Dutch kiddie, wooden-shod, in scarlet and white,
with wigs of peroxide hair. Then sailors, some of them twirling
oars--the famous victorious crew of fifteen years back; with
these march a dozen lads from fourteen to eight, the sons of
the class, sailor-clad too; up from their midst as they reach
the centre of the field drifts a flight of blue balloons of all
sizes. Then come the men of twenty years ago stately in white
gowns and mortar-boards; then the Triennials, with a class boy
of two years, costumed in miniature and trundled in a go-cart
by a nervous father. The Highlanders stalk by to the skirl of
bagpipes with their contingent of tall boys, the coming sons
of Alma Mater. The thirty-five-year graduates, eighty strong,
the men who are handling the nation, wear a unanimous sudden
growth of rolling gray beard. Class after class they come,
till over a thousand men have marched out to the music of bands,
down Yale Field and past the great circle of the seats, and
have settled in brilliant masses of color on the "bleachers."
Then from across the field rise men's voices singing. They
sing the college songs which their fathers sang, which their
sons and great-grandsons will sing. The rhythm rolls forward
steadily in all those deep voices:
"Nor time nor change can aught avail," the words come,
"To break the friendships formed at Yale."
There is many a breath caught in the crowded multitude to hear
the men sing that.
Then the game--and Yale wins. The classes pour on the field in
a stormy sea of color, and dance quadrilles, and form long lines
hand in hand which sway and cross and play fantastically in a
dizzying, tremendous jubilation which fills all of Yale Field.
The people standing up to go cannot go, but stay and watch them,
these thousand children of many ages, this marvellous show of
light-heartedness and loyalty. Till at last the costumes drift
together in platoons and disappear slowly; and the crowd thins
and the last and most stirring act of the commencement-day drama
is at hand.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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