Part 11 (1/2)

V

But it is not the workaday Wellesley, tranquilly pursuing her serious and semi-serious occupations, that the outsiders know best To thee plays with e ever had such a perfect playground Every hill and grove and hollow of the beautiful cahts

Those were the nights when Rosalind and Orlando wandered out of Arden into a New EnglandAriel forsook Prospero's isle torhododendrons--in blossoed bloohts when Puck ca up from Tupelo with titania's fairy rout a-twinkle at his heels; when the great Hindu Raj floated froe across the moonlit waters of Lake Waban; when Tristra Mark, all love distraught, cast anchor in the little cove below Stone Hall and played their passion out; when Nicolette kilted her skirts against the dew and argued of love with Aucassin Those were the nights when the Countess Cathleen--loveliest of Yeats's Irish ladies--found Paradise and the Heavenly Host awaiting her on a Wellesley hilltop when she had sold her soul to feed her starving peasants

But the glalaical on Tree Day, for then the mythic folk of ancient Greece, the hamadryads and Dian's nymphs, Venus and Orpheus and Narcissus, and all the rest, coreen billows of the lawn

To see veiled Cupid, like a living fla the hillside trees, doift as fire, to the waiting Psyche, is never to forget No wood near Athens was ever so vision-haunted as Wellesley with the dancing spirits of past Tree Days

On that day in early June the whole college turns itself into a pageant of spring Froe Hall once towered, the faculty and the aluer sisters reen caarden the procession winds upon itself; hundreds and hundreds of seniors and juniors and sophomores and freshmen,--more than fourteen hundred of them in 1914 Then it breaks ranks and plants itself in parterres at the foot of the hill, olden blosso to it And after the procession come the dances Sometimes a Breton Pardon wanders across the sea The Gods froroves of acade up the wide avenue at the edge of the green

The spirits of sun and moon, the nymphs of the wind and the rain, have woven their reensward And in the fairy ring around Longfellow fountain, gnomes and fays and freshmen play hide-and-seek with the water nixies

The first Tree Day was Mr Durant's idea; no one was more awake than he, in the old days, to Wellesley's poetic possibilities

And the first trees were gifts froolden evergreens--one for 1879 and one for 1880 The two trees were planted on May 16, 1877, the sopho room An early chronicler writes, ”Then it was that the venerated spade made its first appearance We had confidently expected a trowel, had written indeed 'Apostrophe to the Trowel' on our prograirl of about the saested, of the same mental capacity, was so stricken with astonishment when she had mounted the rostrum and this burly instruot her speech And then it was there was introduced theclass trees too delicate to bear the college course Although a foolish little bird built her nest and laid her eggs in the golden-leaved evergreen of '79, and although aappeared immediately in the Retinospora Precipera Aurea of '80, yet the rival 'nyolden hair' were both soon forced to forsake their withered tenements; Mr Hunnewell's exotics, after another trial or two, being succeeded by plebeian hemlocks”

The true story of the Wellesley spade and how it came to be handed down frosley's diary, where we learn how the ”burly instrument” of 1877 was succeeded by a less unwieldy and more ladylike utensil Under the date, April 3, 1878, we find:

Our class (the class of '81) had a ht

We held it in one of the laboratories on the fifth floor, quite in secret, for we didn't want the '80 girls to find it out The class of '80 is thought to be extraordinarily brilliant, and they certainly do look down on us freshly stupid I don't say very irl: besides, if I work hard I can graduate with '80, but at present my lot is cast with '81 We have decided to have a tree planting, and it is to be entirely original and the first of a series

Mr Durant has given a japanese Golden Evergreen to '79 and one to '80 They are precisely alike and they had been planted for quite a while before he thought of turning them into class trees We heard a dark ru to plant another evergreen under the libraryand present it to us But we voted to forestall his generosity We mean to have an ele, in the center or just on the other side of the driveway The burning question remained as to who should acquaint Mr Durant with our valuable ideas

nobody seeer for the job, and finally I was nominated ”You know him better than we do,” they all said, so I finally consented I haven't a ghost of an idea what to say; for when one corateful of '81 not to want the evergreen under the library

April 10 Alice and I went to Mr Durant to-day about the tree planting; but Alice was stricken with teh she had sole; so I had to wade right into the subject alone I began in raceful and diplomatic introduction on the spur of the moment Mr Durant was in the office with a pile of papers before him as usual; he appeared to be very preoccupied and he was looking rather severe The interview proceeded about as follows:

He glanced up at us sharply and said, ”Well, young ladies,”

which et down to business; racefully as a cat coular tree-planting, Mr Durant” Of course I should have said, ”The class of '81 would like to have a tree-planting, if you please”

Mr Durant appeared somewhat startled: ”Eh, what's that?”

he said, then he settled back in his chair and looked hard at us

His eyes were as keen as frost; but they twinkled--just a little, as I have discovered they can and do twinkle if one isn't afraid to say right out what one means, without unnecessary fuss and twaddle

”Alice and I are delegates from the Class of '81,” I explained, a trifle more lucidly ”The class has voted to plant an elm for our class tree, and ould like to plant it in front of the college in a pronore the evergreen ruhtful ”Huirls of '81 a choice evergreen, and as for a place for it: what do you say to the plot on the north side, just under the library ?”

I looked beseechingly at Alice She was apparently very much occupied in a meek survey of the toes of her boots, which she had stubbed into pres

Meanwhile Mr Durant aiting for our look of pleased surprise and joyful acquiescence Then, without a vestige of diploht out, ”Yes, Mr Durant; we heard so; but we don't think, that is, we don't want an evergreen under the library e would like a tree that will live a long, long ti like an elm, and ant it where everybody will see it”

Mr Durant looked exceedingly surprised, and for the space of five seconds I was breathless Then he s way that he has ”Well,” he said, and looked at ain, ”what else have you decided to do?”

Then I told hiram we had planned, which is to include an address to the spade (which we hope will be preserved forever and ever), a class song, a procession, and a few other inchoate ideas Mr Durant entered right into the spirit of it, he said he liked the idea of a spade to be handed down from class to class He asked us if we had the spade yet, and I told hi to buy it for the class in the village that afternoon

”Well, ood one,” he advised We said ould, very joyfully Then he told us weelm anted, and tie our class colors on it, and he would order it to be transplanted for us After that he put on his hat and all three of us went out and fixed the spot right in front of the college by the driveway Mr Durant himself stuck a little stick in the exact place where the elm of '81 ave its branches for at least a hundred years, I hope

The hundred years are still to run, and old College Hall has vanished, but the '81 elm stands in its ”prominent” place, a tree of ancient

It was not until 1889 that the pageant elean to take a definite and conspicuous place in the Tree Day exercises