Page:The Fraternity and the College (1915).pdf/196

 come into our lives and for the time being we forget the old. My classmates returned this year to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of our graduation. One man said to me, "When I got into town the first thing I did was to take a walk about the campus. I did not see a familiar face; most of the buildings were new since I graduated; the town was metamorphosed, and all the old familiar scenes were gone. What a fool I was, I thought, for coming back. I sat down gloomy and disappointed. A man walked by me looking about apparently as I had done. His figure was aldermanic but some way familiar. 'Why, it's Fred Waterman,' I said to myself, and I rushed up to him and introduced myself and shook him by the hand, and gradually it all came back to me. On Commencement day when the long procession passed by me and I heard the band playing and took in the beauty and the meaning of it all, I thrilled again as when I was an undergraduate. It was mine, this college, with all its wealth of associations and aspirations and ideals, and it had helped more than I could realize to make me what I am. It was mine and I loved it all, and no one could take it away from me." The feeling may wane, but it comes back again.

Sometimes, perhaps, the undergraduate fails to grasp all that the sentiment may signify. Two or three years ago, following a somewhat hilarious