The atmosphere is enchanted; it is full of greetings and reunions
and new beginnings and of old friendship; with the every-day
clothes the boys of old have shed responsibilities and dignities
and are once more irresponsibly the boys of old. From California
and Florida, even from China and France, they come swarming into
the Puritan place, while in and out through the light-hearted
kaleidoscopic crowd hurry slim youngsters in floating black gown
and scholar's cap--the text of all this celebration, the
graduating class. Because of them it is commencement, it is
they who step now over the threshold and carry Yale's honor in
their young hands into the world. But small attention do they get,
the graduating class, at commencement. The classic note of their
grave youthfulness is drowned in the joyful uproar; in the clamor
of a thousand greetings one does not listen to these voices which
say farewell. From the nucleus of these busy, black-clad young
fellows, the folds of their gowns billowing about light, strong
figures, the stern lines of the Oxford cap graciously at odds
with the fresh modelling of their faces--down from these lads
in black, the largest class of all, taper the classes,--fewer,
grayer, as the date is older, till a placard on a tree in the
campus tells that the class of '51, it may be, has its
head-quarters at such a place; a handful of men with white hair
are lunching together--and that is a reunion.

In the afternoon of commencement day there is a base-ball game at
Yale Field. To that the returning classes go in costume, mostly
marching out afoot, each with its band of music, through the gay,
dusty street, by the side of the gay, dusty street, by the side
of the gay, crowded trolley-cars loaded to the last inch of the