After the Oration and Poem, which, having nothing distinctive, I pass over, comes the "Collation." The members of the Senior Class prepare a banquet,--sometimes separately and sometimes in clubs, at an expense ranging from fifty to five hundred dollars,--to which they invite as many friends as they choose, or as are available. The banquet is quite as rich, varied, and elegant as you find at evening parties, and the occasion is a merry and pleasant one. But it occurred to me that there may be unpleasant things connected with this custom. In a class of seventy-five, in a country like America, it is probable that a certain proportion are ill able to meet the expense which such custom necessitates. Some have fought their own way through college. Some must have been fought through by their parents. To them I should think this elaborate and considerable outlay must be a very sensible inconvenience. The mere expense of books and board, tuition and clothing, cannot be met without strict economy, and much parental and family sacrifice. And at the end of it all, when every nerve has been strained, and must be strained harder still before the man can be considered fairly on his feet and able to run his own race in life, comes this new call for entirely uncollegiate disbursements. Of course it is only a custom. There is no college by-law, I suppose, which prescribes a valedictory SYMPOSIUM. Probably it grew up gradually from small ice-cream beginnings to its present formidable proportions; but a custom is as rigid as a chain. I wondered whether the moral character of the young men was generally strong enough, by the time they were in their fourth collegiate year, to enable them to go counter to the custom, if it involved personal sacrifice at home,--whether there was generally sufficient courtliness, not to say Christianity, in the class,--whether there was sufficient courtesy, chivalry, high-breeding,--to make the omission of this party-giving unnoticeable, or not unpleasant.
I by no means say, that the inability of a portion of the students to entertain their friends sumptuously should prevent those who are able from doing so. As the world is, some will be rich and some will be poor. This is a fact which they have to face the moment they go out into the world; and the sooner they grapple with it, and find out its real bearings and worth, or worthlessness, the better. Boys are usually old enough by the time they are graduated to understand and take philosophically such a distinction. Nor do I admit that poor people have any right to be sore on the subject of their poverty. The one sensitiveness which I cannot comprehend, with which I have no sympathy, for which I have no pity, and of which I have no tolerance, is sensitiveness about poverty. It is an essentially vulgar feeling. I cannot conceive how a man who has any real elevation of character, any self-respect, can for a moment experience so ignoble a shame. One may be annoyed at the inconveniences, and impatient of the restraints of poverty; but to be ashamed to be called poor or to be thought poor, to resort to shifts, not for the sake of being comfortable or elegant, but of seeming to be above the necessity of shifts, is an indication of an inferior mind, whether it dwell in prince or in peasant. The man who does it shows that he has not in his own opinion character enough to stand alone. He must be supported by adventitious circumstances, or he must fall. Nobody, therefore, need ever expect to receive sympathy from me in recounting the social pangs or slights of poverty. You never can be slighted, if you do not slight yourself. People may attempt to do it, but their shafts have no barb. You turn it all into natural history.
It is a psychological phenomenon, a study, something to be analyzed, classified, reasoned from, and bent to your own convenience, but not to be taken to heart. It amuses you; it interests you; it adds to your stock of facts; it makes life curious and valuable: but if you suffer from it, it is because you have not basis, stamina; and probably you deserve be slighted. This, however, is true only when people have become somewhat concentrated. Children know nothing of it. They live chiefly from without, not from within. Only gradually as they approach maturity do they cut loose from the scaffolding, and depend upon their own centre of gravity. Appearances are very strong in school. Money and prodigality have great weight there, notwithstanding the democracy of attainments and abilities. Have the students self-poise enough to refrain from these festive expenses without suffering mortification? Have they virtue enough to refrain from them with the certainty of incurring such suffering? Have they nobility, and generosity, and largeness of soul enough, while abstaining themselves for conscience' sake, to share in the plans, and sympathize without servility in the pleasures of their rich comrades? to look on with friendly interest, without cynicism or concealed malice, at the preparations in which they do not join? Or do they yield to selfishness, and gratify their own vanity, weakness, self-indulgence, and love of pleasure, at whatever cost to their parents? Or is there such a state of public opinion and usage in College, that this custom is equally honored in the breach and in the observance?
