just as heartily. For that is the spirit of Yale.

Only juniors room in Durfee Hall. On Tap Day an outsider is lucky
who has a friend there, for a window is a proscenium box for
the play--the play which is a tragedy to all but forty-five of the
three hundred and odd juniors. The windows of every story of the
gray stone facade are crowded with a deeply interested audience;
grizzled heads of old graduates mix with flowery hats of women;
every one is watching every detail, every arrival. In front of
the Hall is a drive, and room for perhaps a dozen carriages next
the fence--the famous fence of Yale--which rails the campus round.
Just inside it, at the north-east corner, rises the tree. People
stand up in the carriages, women and men; the fence is loaded with
people, often standing, too, to see that tree.

All over the campus surges a crowd; students of the other classes,
seniors who last year stood in the compact gathering at the tree
and left it sore-hearted, not having been "taken"; sophomores
who will stand there next year, who already are hoping for and
dreading their Tap Day; little freshmen, each one sure that he,
at least, will be of the elect; and again the iron-gray heads,
the interested faces of old Yale men, and the gay spring hats
like bouquets of flowers.

It is, perhaps, the most critical single day of the four years'
course at the University. It shows to the world whether or no a boy,
after three years of college life, has in the eyes of the student
body "made good." It is a crucial test, a heart-rending test
for a boy of twenty years.