PRIZE ESSAY No. 7.
SOCIAL LIFE AT WILLIAMS COLLEGE.
NESTLED snugly away from the rest of the world, in the pleasant Hoosac Valley, lies Williamstown, the seat of Williams College, and a community of well-marked local color. The town contains two villages, each as unlike the other as you can well imagine, and with the most diverse aims and sympathies. The idea you get of the surroundings of old Williams as you flash by in the train, or during the thirty seconds' stop, is that entertained by the majority of your fellow-travellers who have no better source of information, and is by no means flattering to the taste of men who have chosen this as the home of their student life. From the car-window you see a country railway-station, and a rude covered bridge across the little river that flows beside the track, while just beyond looms up the prosaic front of a huge factory, set off by rows of white tenement-houses, uniform throughout, even to their lack of blinds. But leave the train, enter the waiting village coach, and a few minutes will effect a complete transformation of the scene. Making a sharp turn, you approach "Consumption Hill," crowned on the right by the Soldiers' Monument, and on the left by Clark Hall, a mediæval-fortress-like stone structure that seems an outwork to defend the little college world just beyond. Ascending the hill, you pass out between these sentinels along the main street, a broad park-like plateau, with the road in the middle bordered by green lawns. Outside these run the sidewalks, shaded by a profusion of old elms and maples. Along this street, on both sides, stand the college buildings, dating, one by one, from the Revolutionary period to the present time,—the earlier ones of brick, the rest of stone.
If you are of the genus summer visitor, a genus which flocks hither in swarms with every recurring June, you will now be borne away from the immediate vicinity of the "classic shades" to one of the summer hotels. But if you come as a student (and this we will suppose) your fate will have little in common with that class. Your first act will naturally be the application for a room, and, as in Williams the great majority of students room in the college buildings, you will probably soon find yourself established in one of these with a chum, who is usually a total stranger; that is, of course, unless you prefer to room alone and pay a double rent. Next morning you go to chapel at the summons of the bell. After prayers the Freshmen are convened, college rules explained, work is assigned for immediate preparation, and you are fairly launched upon your four-years' voyage.
A sense of loneliness soon causes you to fraternize with your brother neophytes, especially as the vigilance of the powers that be is not always able to prevent a midnight incursion of the dreaded Sophomores, who, joyful at their own release from the state of freshness, oc-
