Page:Samuel F. Batchelder - Bits of Harvard History (1924).pdf/372

 Kerry, he arrived in Boston at about the age of twenty, and was associated with the College for a full half-century. Thus his famous introductory observation to all freshmen, “I knew y’r father, fri’nd,” had every probability on its side. It may have been his immortal translation of the University motto, Veritas, as “Ter hell wid Yale!” that secured for him, late in the eighties, the responsible post of mascot at all athletic contests, and made him an ex-officio member of every Harvard team, whether at the home grounds or on tour. Through his travels in that capacity he became a really national figure. In his last years, with little cart and donkey, he was the uncrowned monarch of Yard and Field, everywhere acclaimed with a devotion that poets and statesmen might have envied. He died in 1906. In him the type rose to its perfect apotheosis—and expired. To-day we look about us mournfully, and ask, by a Hibernianism which he would have been the first to appreciate, “Was John the Orangeman the Last of the Mohegans?”

Our survey of oddities would be incomplete did it fail to mention an erratic and rather tragic group, possible only in a university town—the ‘‘resident graduates.” From very early times a sort of collegiate courtesy per-