Page:The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson (1924).pdf/66

42 places always were deferentially reserved for the returned missionaries, those idolized sons of the college, for whose sacred and brave ideals the institution was prayed into being.

Edward Dickinson, with his Trustee tea party, held on the Wednesday night of Commencement Week for forty years, was too pronounced a feature of those days to be forgotten or omitted. Friends were received all over the house and grounds from six to eight. A supper was handed about with most remarkable tea and coffee. Here one could always find Governors and Judges, interesting missionaries, famous professors from our best colleges, editors of high repute, fair women and brave men. This became such a time-honored affair that one was often heard to say in the hurried good comradeship of the week, "Oh, I will see you again at the Dickinson tea party."

The social functions of Commencement Week to-day seem rather lacking in high effect as one recalls how the Governor and his staff in uniform, with spurs clanking, blended and contrasted with the sombre black all about the piazzas and under the old pines of three generations' growth. Governor Banks was said to be the handsomest, most martial of them all. Governor Bullock was another memorable figure, with high fine bearing, rather stiffly elegant, and always complete suaviter in modo, as he quoted his classics on any small mellow justification. Later on in her life Emily Dickinson forsook her usual seclusion at these times, and radiant as a flying spirit, diaphanously dressed in white, always with a flower in her hand, measured her wit and poured her wine amid much excitement and applause from those fortunate enough to get near her.