“ As long as the Fool was occupied with dreaming and laying the sods on his house, or hunting for the dun deer of a moonlit night, he was company enough for himself, turning his fancies over and over in his mind, as the wind bundles the clouds about the sky; then when he had arranged his conceptions to his taste, he was free to admire them undisturbed, until a new fancy happened along to displace them; just as the wind leaves off driving the clouds at sunset, and in the west there is a sweet tableau for men to look at, till night blots out the scene. ”

“ Such is Bill Pratt, honest, cheerful, and industrious, the maligner of no man. His sturdy figure long holds a place in the memory of every student; his photograph decorates every student's album. Without him our college would be incomplete. Esteemed by all for his unfailing integrity and industry, laughed at by all for his oddities, he remains ever the same. We trust that the day is far distant when he will be among us no more, and when the college walls shall cease to echo his chaotic and ungovernable eloquence.
Quarterly, 1869. ”

“ This was the time of the refounding of that institution under the beginning of President Northrop's administration, to whom Professor Judson became a right hand. His career is an illustrious example of one rising slowly and patiently through every grade of the public school system, to its crown in the highest grades in the state university. It must have been of inestimable worth to him to become familiar with the genius of a state university, so peculiarly a people's institution and so characteristic of the middle West. ”

“ No wonder then that his speeches are models of breadth and sweetness and appositeness, and that good judges regarded him when living as in this department of expression unrivalled.
He who is so guided by the love of letters engrafted on the love of man as to give constant and ample expression to these motives, will be neither a reformer without grace nor a scholar without manliness. Give to such a man a flow of animal spirits and a dash of wit, and he should be not unapt to entertain even when poised on the dangerous wing of an after-dinner speech. ”

“ When we behold, Sir, a great and powerful nation exerting all its energy to undermine the vast fabrics of Religion and Government, when we behold them inculcating the disbelief of a Deity, of future rewards and punishments; when we behold them discarding every moral principle and dissolving every tie which connects men together in Society, which sweetens life and renders it worthy enjoying; when we behold them brutalizing man that they may govern him,—as friends to Humanity ”

“ Because Williams and Yale have produced great and useful men, it does not follow that their commencement dinners are always marked by the finest flow of wit and wisdom, nor that pioneers in civilization who bring great honor to their alma mater should always and everywhere speak for her. Dinner-speaking is a fine art, not one for which men need absolutely European travel and study, but one which is never mastered except by those who love and perhaps know how to reach all the beautiful thoughts of every age and clime. ”

“ Who is he?"
"Methinks he is a squire but lately come to court, so there'll be few to miss him, when the night's work is done."
The jester sighed. "So young he is and fair. See that great purple welt across his forehead."
"'Twas where I clubbed him senseless."
"And must thou torture him to death? Must he so surely die?"
"Aye, so run my orders. He will die—and thou too, black. Hold thou my burden, fool, whilst I undo my halberd!"
From the kneeling eunuch came a shriek and moan and incoherent jabbering. The captain cursed and stayed his uplifted arm.
"It is too dark to strike," he growled. ”

“ The fool bowed. "It must be, when kings crave for it. Yet beauty such as thine can only love the beautiful."
"Then I shall pity him—with all my heart's strength; I'll comfort his poor life with sweetest pity."
"Lady, pity is the meanest gate of love."
The captain growled and swung his halberd viciously. "Keep thy wit for the king's ear," he said. "The lady Suelva hath spoken her decision. We dally no longer." He bent down and lifted the squire's body over his back. Then he turned to the eunuch. "Take thou the old mute's corpse. I have kept his carcass these seven days; to serve as a pattern. ”

“ The rear wall is broken by a massive oaken door leading to the courtyard of the monastery, and two rudely glazed windows. On the right an open doorway leads to the chapel and to one side of the doorway is a shrine to the Virgin and Child, before which some candles burn with wavering flames. On the opposite side of the room is a huge fireplace with a blazing log fire. The wind is roaring outside, and even blows through the rude hall in great, gusty draughts, while a fine powder of snow sifts in through crevices of windows and door. ”

“ The jester laughed shortly. "I had not meant for thee to glance upon this scene," he said, "but if 'twere best, then look, lady, look!" and he threw open the trap. A great red light flared up into the donjon, and waved and danced along the moon-green walls. The empty bier seemed licked in ruddy flames, and on the moist mould of the ceiling, each little drop of water sparkled like a ruby.
"Look at him," repeated the jester. "Shrink not; they are only heating the irons."
She crept to the edge of the trap, and peered down, fascinated. "Who are those huge hairy men, with wild beasts' faces?" ”

“ MORTAL VERSE WILLIAM HUTCHESON WINDOM '11 The muse of poetry is a lady of many whims. Fancy, not reason, seems to determine her actions. She loads the untutored ploughman with the most lavish gifts, while the scholar sits neglected in his study. She places a golden crown on the brow of the slave and flings a tasselled cap at the master. And yet the fool's raiment is worn with as serious and dignified mien as is the kingly crown. She is a malicious person, and while she keeps a straight face before you, it is a hundred to one that she winks behind your back. ”

“ THE MASK OF ADELITA GERALD MYGATT '08 To think that it all happened within a rifle shot of the greatest city in America, in the very outskirts of New York—this was strange. A romance of old Spain, tingling with the memory of times when men fought single-handed for the toss of a rose or the gleam from under the black lashes of a senorita, or bled and died for the sake of a yellow silken scarf! ”

“ III The gray desolation of a March afternoon brooded out over the wide meadows, out over the dim woods beyond, and still on to the half-visible hills in the distance, where it merged itself imperceptibly into a low, lead-colored sky. Though the rain was not falling, everything dripped with the damp. In front of the Waring farmhouse the road, wallowing with fat mud, stretched off in a dirty streak under the glistening limbs of the maples. The door of the house opened and David came out. His mother followed him anxiously. ”

“ ADDRESS OF THE STUDENTS OF WILLIAMS COLLEGE TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES From the Hampshire Gazette, Northampton, Mass., July 25, 1798
Sir,—Though members of an infant Institution and of little comparative weight in the scale of the Union, we feel for the interest of our country. It becomes every patriotic youth in whose breast there yet remains a single principle of honour, to come forward calmly, boldly, and rationally to defend his country. ”

“ With the same laudable ambition that moves the man of business to be identified as successful in his life career, the writer, whose only wealth is the acquisition of knowledge and the cultivation of an inherited gift, comes before the public in a pursuit that has ever proved the animating ally of education and good breeding and the strong cordon of social refinement. ”

“ The dinner speeches with which the readers of this paper are perhaps most familiar, those made when the alumni of a noble college gather around the table of their alma mater, ought to be characterized by the broad sympathy, the quick insight, the flexible grace and the genial humor of the thoroughly educated man. Although to make fine dinner speeches can never be an aim worthy of an earnest man, yet to have the power and culture from which such a speech usually comes, is the highest aim in a literary regard that any man can have. ”

“ The trim soberness of the dusty road with its gray windings and vistas of sand-ruts becomes less matter-of-fact at length, and so you leave it to itself, and seek a path that leads to the heart of Nature and far from ways of men. Down grassy slopes and over little hillocks that pique your curiosity by shutting out the view of what is coming next; now skirting the edge of a furrowed potato-patch, and now sauntering down cool lanes of corn, listening to the breezy lisping of the long, green leaves that flap you softly in the face ”

“ Elsewhere in the barn it was already half dark. On one side the hay rose up in a tremendous heap almost to the roof, where it vanished dimly in the dusky shadows. Opposite were the cow-stables, five of them in a row, each occupant munching her cud contentedly and now and then giving vent to a soft, self-satisfied low. From one of the stalls could be heard the rhythmical squirt of milk against the milking-pail, for David was engaged upon his evening work. On a rickety chair near the hay-loft sat Janet, holding a timid little barn cat in her lap and stroking it nervously. ”

“ There are times when those ordinarily confident shrink back at the thought of grappling with the mighty issues that lie before them. There are minds of a structure so singularly complex and unique, that one leaves the study of them impressed only with a deep, abiding sense of his inability to fathom them. We have in our midst one such, the penetration of whose manifestations and phenomena is well calculated to baffle the most zealous investigator. Reared among the rugged hill-sides and verdant vales of Williamstown, his character and oratory bear the evident impress of his nurturing. ”

“ So presently I went up and served my lord and my lady where they sat at a little table alight with many tapers, like the shrine in the great church at Soissons, with the goblets and the silver dishes making a brave show among them. There was a strange air over it all, like the breathless moment in a tourney when the tucket has blown and the knights pause before giving spur. My lady, when she spoke at all, spoke in a voice as of some one stifling, but my lord said never a word and ate and drank but little, his eyes always on my lady's face. ”

“ It is a short-sighted and one-sighted earnestness that despises the wit and banter of society, and affects the isolation and grandeur of pure thought. The mountain summit is too far removed from the walks of men to make it possible for the recluse to wield all the influence that his powers may entitle him to exert. The metaphysician less than the poet, the country minister less than the successful lawyer, is the autocrat of the dinner-table. ”

“ Choate, a Harvard graduate, went over again, last year, at the sixty-fourth anniversary of the society, the main facts of the history, and dwelt upon the relations of New Englanders to New York, making a speech that, printed, fills ten octavo pages but which the audience found charming from beginning to end.
This, like every other fine art, has something cosmopolitan in it. It eschews the local and narrow, refuses to belong to any sect or party, and appeals by the widest culture to men of culture. The dinner speeches of our own Bryant are thus liberal and catholic. ”

“ Oh Janet, when I feel as tired as I do to-night I get terribly sickened with all this humdrum life on the farm! It's just work, work, from morning till night and when you get done you're too tired to read or talk or do anything but just go to sleep like a big ox. ”