Freshman Girls Made Merry

FRESHMAN GIRLS MADE MERRY

The Annual Function Was a Crush

A MOVING PICTURE

Of Youth, Beauty and Kaleidescopic Colors Filled the Gymnasium

As though the years vied with each other in the freshman dance, Saturday night's spread at the Barbour gymnasium surpassed them all. Before 9 o'clock the crowd had grown to a crush, and the anterooms were filled with gay gowned girls, upper classmen to whom the festivity was an old story freshman being initiated into the college spirit, with all the enthusiasm of a first time. There was a constant flutter; juniors and seniors hieing hither and thither, making up the programs for their freshman's dance. Crowds separated into knots and knots filed into a continuous procession, who in their turn were presented to the chaperons, Dean Jordan, Mrs. H. B. Hutchins, Mrs. V. C. Vaughn, Mrs. Prescott, Mrs. W. B. Hinsdale.

The grand march, led by Dr. Snyder and Miss Stuart, was a long line of vivid coloring, passing and repassing, crossing and recrossing, combining, dividing, like a kaleidoscopic picture, shifting into an almost endless series of beautiful patterns, which with the tune of the waltz scattered into couples and the dance began. The music was furnished by the Harmonic orchestra, which well became its name. Such concord of sweet sounds has rarely been heard on class occasions. When the chorus of the barn dance, "In Old Alabama," sounded its plantation melody across to the waltzers, a cheer went up by way of encore, and twice was sung the chorus to the tapping of heels and a whirl of gauze:

"Old Alabama, 'way down Mobile,

Back to de barn from white cotton fiel',

Ham in de smoke house, coon shake yer heel,

'Way down in ole Al'bama."

Only the lateness of the hour silenced the demand for an encore for every number. Until the hour of 12 there was an almost continuous dance, only stopping for an exchange of partners or for refreshments which were served in the reception room. The time for good night came too soon; there was the last glimpse of a girl in pink, a vanishing of blue, a flash of occasional jewel, as some student waved her hand in goodby to the class colors hung across the four galleries--yellow and white for the seniors, purple and white for the juniors, red and gray for the sophomores and red and black for the freshmen of 1907.