The absence of chapter-houses and the less fully
developed social life of the fraternities left room for a stronger
class feeling and perhaps a more sympathetic college spirit than
exists to-day. The smallness of the classes and the absence of the
electives, too, aided the cultivation of class feeling; the classes
ranged from forty-five to sixty, and the whole class was held solidly
together during the whole course, all reciting in the same room three
times a day from the beginning of freshman year to the end of senior.
College singing was hearty and spirited, but our repertoire was
limited. I recall many evenings of blameless hilarity on the benches
under the trees in front of East College. For more ambitious musical
performance we had our "Mendelssohn Society," whose concerts were not
probably so classical as we then esteemed them, but whose rehearsals
gave us not a little pleasure. Athletics had hardly a name to live.
Now and then a football was mysteriously dropped into the West College
yard, and kicked about in a very promiscuous fashion; the freshmen and
sophomores generally had a match of what was by courtesy called
base-ball.
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