282
The University Courier.
LITERARY.
WHEN SNOW-FLAKES FALL.
When snow-flakes fall with airy grace Upon Earth's grim and rugged face They frolic, leap,-then glide away To deck some nook or leafless spray. Or veil bare boughs with misty lace.
Two bright eyes watched the fairy chase, And baby-shouts ring out apace She never yet has seen a day When snow flakes fall.
But silent, by the broad fire-place,
The mother rests—while time and space
For her are lost in snow drops' play—
She seems to see on hill-side gray,
A mound, which gleams in feathery trace,
When sno-wflakes fall.
ABILENE, KANS., Jan. 1, '94.
GREETING.
Good morning Ninety-four!
We beg of you give o'er
That legacy of lore
Which we inherit.
Your favor we implore!
Your genius pray outpour!—
And ever more and more
Your grace we'll merit.
And, just for custom's sake,
We now proceed to shake
Off every pain and ache
Amassed the past year.
Good promises we make,
Good resolutions take,—
Which of course will break
As we did last year.
We hereby own it true
That errors oft occur:
But yet we will, in lieu
Of vain entreating,
Admit our vices too.
But now we'll start anew,
And here present to you
Our New Year's greeting.
W.
OH, WHY IS MY HEART SO SAD?
OH, WHY IS MY HEART SO SAD?
Obon a bright and balmy night,
When gently blew the breezes light,
In accents low,
I asked he 'neath the campus wall
To be her escort to the ball. She said she'd go.
Upon a frightful, stormy night,
A carriage climbed that dismal height.
Within was pent
A youth, who groaned,-is groaning still,
"Oh, who will pay my carriage bill?"
And thus she went!
ON A STUDENTS FIRST DAY.
The academical quarter-hour was yet a matter of future history for me; so by a spurt at the end of the half-mile I reached the lecture room on the first minute of the hour. Four men, probably really interested in comparative anatomy were examining the alcoholic preparations on the reading desk; otherwise little suggestion of anything soon to happen. Regretting the last 100 yards, I went to the back or, rather, clambered to the top of the room for a seat. Lenckart has a room full of hearers. As the men began to gather the top of the room became, as it remained throughout the lecture hour, uncomfortable. One, probably, of ever four of the incomers was smoking, and the odor of the antiquarish smoke of 4-phennige cigars is not good. A few 10.phennige cigars which came in later afforded some relief.
After all the 150 men, or most of them, and the two very brave young women, one of whom is an American, had got seated, and the long, narrow writing shelf in front of each row of seats had been profusely dotted with little, black-backed note-books, a tremendous pounding of feet on the floor, accompnied by a disappearance of the 4-ph. horrors, announced the entrance of a fine-looking white-haired man of 72 years. At the moment when he could first be heard, he was saying something about blood-cells, and for three-quarters of an hour he continued a series of rapid remarks on the same subject. One of these remarks was made inaudible by vigorous hissing and a furious scraping of feet on the floor, which was the encouraging welcome given a late comer. Duaing the course of the rapidly spoken remarks, more enthusiastic stepping on the floor, and loud guffaws of laughter greeted what was probably a witicism of the lecturer, but the vocabulary and syntax of it not being found in William Tell or in the one-time Sophomore book of excerpts from Goethe's travel-sketches. my college German was unable to give me warrant for laughter at it.
The lecture was interesting not alone because of its substance, some of which I understood, but also for the manner of its delivery, and, truly, also, because it was Lenckart, one of the greatest of living Zoologists, who made it. The lecturer talked loudly, rapidly, with evident extreme earnestness, without notes, and with much walking about and gesturing. At the close of the hour, as he began to edge toward the door, though without abatement of earnest talking, the little black note-books disappeared, the portable inkstands were screwed shut, and amid the din of uncommonly vigorously pounding, the glorious white-haired man plunged out of the room. Then was heard a long-drawn-out gentle rasping; it was the scratching of matches preparatory to to the relighting of the 4-ph. relicts; and here an unacclimated Kansan incontinently fled.
LEIPZIG, 3 December, '93.
V. L. K.