Page:Lippincotts Monthly Magazine-40.djvu/306

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292
SOCIAL LIFE AT YALE.

his college course, and the habits he there contracts from association with his companions often directly affect his future life. Until last year the number of dormitories was entirely inadequate to supply the demands made by the constantly increasing body of students. A large proportion of the Freshmen were obliged to room outside the Campus, and many Sophomores failed to obtain rooms in the university buildings. Most of the members of the present Senior class, however, have enjoyed three years of dormitory life.

A student's room is his home, and in it he leads the life of a Bohemian. It is there that he prepares his lessons, attends to his correspondence, gives his little "spreads," and last, but not least, sleeps. The majority of these apartments are furnished comfortably, and many of them elegantly. The average student has a decided penchant for pictures, and no room is considered complete in its appointments unless a dozen or more paintings and engravings, supplemented by innumerable photographs of athletes and actresses, grace its walls. The mantels are crowded with articles of bric-à-brac, while dance-programmes and German favors hang from the chandeliers. Many of the boys have pianos in their rooms, and the banjo and violin are favorite instruments.

Let us pay a short visit to one of these "bachelors' halls." The hour is midnight. The lessons for the following day have been learned. A game of cards has been in progress, and the participants are sitting about the room in négligé attire. The host brings out several bottles of wine from the mysterious recesses of a dark closet, glasses are filled, and the boys give a reproduction of the ancient Greek symposium, during the course of which toasts are drunk to the healths of the President, members of the faculty, and all the friends, male and female, of those present. A song is sung, and the "merry laugh goes round" as some particularly witty anecdote is related. The second verse of

Landlord, fill the flowing bowl
Till it doth run over,

has just been reached, when a loud knock at the door, followed by the abrupt entrance of a tutor, terminates the evening's festivities and results in the immediate retirement of the host and his guests to their bed-chambers, although but a few moments before the company had been unanimous in its expression of the sentiment

We won't go home till morning.

Class-feeling at Yale is very strong,—much stronger than at Har-