[896.]
The first shall be the last; and when
The shoes wear out, they're mended new;
When men wear out, they're men dead, too!
They both are trod upon, and both
Will trod on others, nothing loth.
Both have their ties, and both incline,
When polished in the world to shine;
And both peg out. Now, would you choose
To be a man or be his shoes.
He sent his son to college to store his head with knowledge,
"I need a smart young fellow in my business house," he said,
"And when he's educated, why, bein' so related,
He's just the one to take the reins and drive up to the head.
"They say he quite surpasses all the fellows in his classes,
And I reckon he'll think nothin' of my rather taxin' load;
gettin' old and weary, but it makes the future cheery
To think.of leanin' on my son adown life's western road."
Well, be trod a path of glory, did this student of any story,
And they dined him, and they wined him, on his final college day.
But he broke each rule of grammar, when he spoke as with a hammer,
And his knees they knocked together if you mentioned algebra.
But he shone forth as a sprinter, and he trained the livelong winter,
rot . the spring and summer races, where his record was most fine.
And the old man looks reflective and thinks college rules defective,
While his son goes round the country with a jolly baseball nine.
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
Princeton College in early days—from the diary of Jeremy
Cockloft :
Princeton—college—professors wear boots students famous
for their love of jest—set college on fire, and burnt out professors;
an excellent joke—mem.; American students very much addicted
to burning down colleges—two societies in the college—good
notion—encourages emulation, and makes little boys fight—
students famous for their eating and learning—saw two at a
tavern who had just got their allowance of spending money—got
puddled and d---d the professors—commencement—students
give a ball and supper—company from New York, Philadelphia
and Albany—N. B.—Students got drunk as usual.
College Verse Column
Tim COLLEGI4 GRADUATU
—Selected