The dignity of the impending, classic, stately event; the sorting of gowns, the whispers and queries concerning what world-famous shoulders were to receive the highest degrees: all this sobered the students and stimulated imaginations, days before the actual event transpired. To me it promised to be the opportunity to see, face to face, the men of culture and administrative power whose names were familiar in the far corners of the country: men who not only figured as authors, administrators, lecturers, scientists, travelers, and moral leaders, but, among them, potential Presidents of the nation, honored citizens of public reputation, men whose names were already merged with civic movements, patriotic events, and national political advances. It meant that history, successful ambition, leadership, and moral fibre were to be personified for me in their highest types. The morning of the inauguration brought with it a great excitement. The Seniors were to wear gowns that morning for the first time. On leaving the house, after breakfast, and taking my position near the Senior Fence, to wait for the formation of the line, a sunburst of silken scarlet gown dazzled my eyes, as a sedate man of sixty, with a white beard, hurried along the path, his head topped by a black velvet bonnet. He was followed by others, in the silken glares of Oxford and Cambridge, and a continual procession of black-draped figures whose multi-colored hoods were like lurid gashes cut in the mourning by a deftly wielded blade. By nine o’clock the campus was astir with visitors, faculty, alumni, undergraduates, the band and the sight-seers. Ellis marshalled us into a double line, so that to the beholder, in our black gowns and black caps, we resembled a very mournful, if dignified, procession of upright ravens. Then the band blared forth a martial thunderclap which pulled our feet into time. Slowly, led by the musicians, we filed on our way around the outer edge of the campus, dragging after us the faculty and distinguished visitors whose chief distinction in the procession lay in their inability or unwillingness to keep to the step we fixed. Our two hundred and odd pairs of hands swished against the sides of our flapping gowns in rhythmic evenness. Not even the precision of a Black Watch drill could have been finer rendered than was our Senior march. The heads and bodies swept from side to side like the orderly attack of a straight, long wave beating backwards and forwards against a cliff. Then, at Assembly Hall, our double line divided and we stood with heads uncovered: a lane of honor, while the recipients of honors, the visiting presidents, the faculty and the alumni threaded their way between our lines into the hall.