The Courage of the Commonplace

by Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

The girl and her chaperon had been deposited early in the desirable
second-story window in Durfee, looking down on the tree. Brant was
a senior and a "Bones" man, and so had a leading part to play in
the afternoon's drama. He must get the girl and the chaperon
off his hands, and be at his business. This was "Tap Day." It is
perhaps well to explain what "Tap Day" means; there are people
who have not been at Yale or had sons or sweethearts there.

In New Haven, on the last Thursday of May, toward five in the
afternoon, one becomes aware that the sea of boys which ripples
always over the little city has condensed into a river flowing
into the campus. There the flood divides and re-divides; the
junior class is separating and gathering from all directions
into a solid mass about the nucleus of a large, low-hanging oak
tree inside the college fence in front of Durfee Hall. The three
senior societies of Yale, Skull and Bones, Scroll and Key, and
Wolf's Head, choose to-day fifteen members each from the junior
class, the fifteen members of the outgoing senior class making
the choice. Each senior is allotted his man of the juniors, and
must find him in the crowd at the tree and tap him on the shoulder
and give him the order to go to his room. Followed by his sponsor
he obeys and what happens at the room no one but the men of the
society know. With shining face the lad comes back later and is
slapped on the shoulder and told, "good work, old man," cordially
and whole-heartedly by every friend and acquaintance--by lads who
have "made" every honor possible, by lads who have "made" nothing,