Class-day Scrimmage At Harvard

Young Harvard has been stirred to the depths at the news that the corporation intended to abo'lsh the scrimmage around the tree which has formad part of the class day exercises for more than eighty years, says Harper's Weekly. It seems that every class since the battle of Waterloo has had a scrimmage around the tree on class day except the class of 1877, which could not manage to select class-day officers and failed on that account to follow the ueual programme. In that year, no provisión for olass day being made by the class, the Corporation intervened, appointed officers of the day and, with the a8sistance of Prof. Lowell, who entertained the class at breakfast, and of the Harvard nine, which beat Yale in the afternoon on Jarvis field, provided a day of considerable festivity. There were no chapel exercises, no oration, no poem and, so far as is known. no regrets at the omission of these features. But successful as this class day was there is no desire to repeat it. So strong were the objections of the class of '97 to the suppression of the scrimmage that it was proposed that if the Corporation was obdurate and wouldn't "lieten to reason" the classday officers would resign and no observance of the day be attempted. Happily harsb measures like these are not likely to oe needed. The seniors have grown calmer, milder methods are obtaining, and the last news was that the authoritiee would be glad to agree to any compromise by which those features of the tree exercises which had become dangerous, through the great increase in the number both of participants and spectators, could be eliminated and the more attracüve ones be retained.