Thus passed and ended our Christmas holidays. Thus delightfully began our New Year. And as each season has appeared, it has brought the memory of those scenes with it, and pleasant memories indeed they've been to us.

And now, Reader, receive our holiday greeting-we wish you heartily -as gems set in the golden joys of the coming vacation-a truly Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

A. B.

Vale.

“Οὐχ οἱ τόποὶ τοὺς ἄνδρας ἐντίμους, ἀλλ ̓ οἱ ἄνδρες
τοὺς τόπους ἐπιδεικνύουσι.”

OUR Alma Mater! Yale, time honored name!
Of long descent, and fair and honest fame;
Well mayest thou glory in thy pedigree,
And well thy children boast themselves in thee,
Whose past extends through distant hoary years,
Whose glorious future dims the sight of seers,-
Whose offspring wide are scattered o'er the world
Where truth is free, or freedom's banner furled,—
Whose honored dead repose in every clime,

Illustrious once, but canonized by time,-
Pure fount of learning, fair forever stand,

The pride and bulwark of our native land.

When Goths and Vandals burn each classic hall,
Fair Freedom's structure too must shortly fall.
Once more we bid thee twice and trebly hail !
Long mayest thou flourish, Alma Mater Yale!

In goodly row see yonder buildings stand
'Mid arching elms, by sportive breezes fauned;
Approach with me this cool and calm retreat,
Where founts Parnassian sparkle at our feet,
And Nidas' current rolls its golden tide

VOL. XVII.

With untold treasures scattered at its side,
Where he who wills may gather priceless store,
Yet leave its wealth exhaustless as before.

Here points to Heaven the unpretending spire
To guide above each wandering low desire,
While morn and eve ascends the voice of prayer
To Him who holds his earthly dwelling there.
With book in hand, the monitor awhile
His curious gaze directs along the aisle.

Kind hearted guardian, without much to please,
And gracious oft to pleading absentees;
Great post of honor, goal of high desires,
The Senior dig-nity to thee aspires;

Who gains thee comes to durance vile at last,
A hempen rope about his-door made fast.

Beethoven's fame demands a passing word,
Whose praise through all our College world is heard.
Each base attempt that fame to vilify

Henceforth in silence and contempt shall die;

The organ's swell shall drown each grumbler's voice,
And bid Beethoven's tuneful sons rejoice.
Thou mighty master, freed from mortal cares,
Whose honored name our College bantling bears,
From seats above, now look propitious down,
And let thy namesake share in thy renown.
Long may its songs in grateful chorus blend,
And ladies long on Sabbath eve attend.

A moment glance along the aisles below,
While from the desk the words of wisdom flow;
Affection warms the preacher's earnest plea,
That with his Maker man at peace would be;
With reverent look the message some receive,
But few, alas! remember or believe:
And when the stream of argument grows deep,
They skim its surface, or more likely sleep.

With bell surmounted, and with turret crowned,
The old Lyceum frowns on all around.
At morn and noon, and eve's impressive hour,
For lessons, meals,-resounds its noisy tower.
Scarce sixty minutes through the livelong day
Without its din, in silence pass away.
Xantippe e'en with all her wealth of tongue
Ne'er such unceasing tiresome changes rung.
Here Sophs assemble in a noisy crowd,
At times I ween, 'imperative and loud.'

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Restraint relaxed, and for the moment free,

All thoughts of fizzles, flunks, and boring, flee.

The Athenæum next in all its glory,
With telescope and eke observatory,

Our notice waits, nor should it vainly wait,-
To Yale's diplomas, Bunyan's Wicket Gate,
Through whose wide portal each succeeding class
Of generous Freshmen must in order pass.
There rushes oft an eager, earnest throng
With Livy's fibs, or Horace's genial song;
Ulysses' wanderings here they oft repeat,
And scan his story with unwilling feet.
At Euclid's drawings with admiring gaze,
They wonder much, and stand in mute amaze.
Enough of this; old Time is on the wing,
As preachers say and poets sometimes sing.
Days, weeks and months unnoticed disappear,
And soon we greet a new and wished for year;
Four such short periods vanish in their flight
Like wildering dreams upon the trail of night;
And boyish scenes, ambition, toil and play
Are borne, enfolded in their arms, away.

Thou noble structure, Palace of the Nine,
In Learning's courts the purest, choicest shrine,—
Great Treasure House, where all that's rich and grand
In thought or time, is ever at command,
Where great ideas sparkling from the mind
Are held in adamantine chains confined,

To burn and glow, forever pure and bright,

And scatter darkness with their radiant light,—
In thee are centered high and warm desires,
And hopes enkindled at thine altar-fires,
Which light the dreamer with their quenchless ray
Through shades of night to everlasting day.

Now may the Muse who makes my song her care,
Of prudence grant her bard an extra share:
With caution's hand I fain would touch the string
Whose strains Yale's great fraternities shall sing.
Linonia! most gentle goddess, hail!
To own thy merits let me never fail.
Age yields respect, and years are on thy head,
Time's waving wings on thee have honors shed;
Each year new jewels binds upon thy crown,
And decks thy laurels with a fresh renown.

Thou Band of Brothers! glorious, firm and strong,
Hand grasped in hand, unbroken flourish long!
Vain were the task to swell thy boundless fame
Or add new honor to thine honored name.
"In Unitate Fratres" stand for aye!

And age shall bring no wasting slow decay.

Be banished strife; though not the self-same hall
Contains the whole, are we not 'Brothers' all?

And thou, our Sister, youngest of the three,
My song some tribute fain would render thee.
Child of the South, thou needest closer care,
Well nigh frost-bitten by our Northern air.
May kinder suns henceforth upon thee shine,
With rays life-giving and with smile benign,
And thou, a generous rival, hold thy place,
Nor lag behind the foremost in the race.

Be hushed the song; for time alike would fail,
To sing the praises or the worth of Yale.
Around her path be health and wealth and peace,
Her honors ripen and her years increase.
When thronging centuries cluster round her way,
May no dishonor stain her later day,

But glory crown with laurel-wreath her brow,
Forever young, forever fair as now.

L.

The Things which Life is Like.

LIFE! Human Life!—that bitter-sweet reality which all men know and none can comprehend, so long the hackneyed composition-theme of every school boy writer, the suggestive subject on which every poet has displayed his powers, the important topic of all sermonizers, the daily thought of physicians and the constant study of metaphysicians,— has thus assumed in mens' ideas almost as many appearances as the 'human face divine' possesses in reality. Its aspects ever vary, for it is, like a Proteus, endlessly changing its shape, or like a Chameleon disguising itself in coats of many colors.

Sometimes it even seems as if men looked at Life through spectacles of different tinted glass or varying magnifying powers. One man has ob

tained the genuine "glorification glasses," and to him our Life on earth seems ineffably magnificent, while a neighbor underrates its value because his lorgnette has been perverted and reversed, and therefore lessens every object. Another thinks that Life is dark and disagreeable, and all because his glass is of a smoky hue; to another all around seems ‘blue,' or naught appears save through a sea-green medium. The glasses of another awkwardly distort, from their imperfect manufacture, all that is seen by their assistance, and others are so formed as only to allow a very narrow field of view, so that only portions of Life can be examined by their aid. We are also sure that there must be glasses of a double refracting power, some men are so used to "seeing double." One thing is fortunate, these so-called "Helps to See" may at any time be changed. It is however very curious to observe how the various ideas of Life have been expressed at different times by different kinds of men. Some lymphatic being says that Life is nothing but a winter's day, a journey to the tomb, an empty dream, a vision, or a fleeting show; to another Life is a mystery, a puzzle, a riddle to be guessed or a problem to be solved; and again we hear it likened to a prison bond which must here be worn and will hereafter be removed, a gem which must here be carefully preserved and polished, and hereafter prized. The plausibility of our belief in a future life has been shown by comparing the days of man to the life of the worm, the chrysalis, the butterfly; and our present existence has been likened at other times to a flight over a yawning gulf,' a 'day's labor before the rest of heaven,' 'a preface' to a book which is to be written in another world; 'a cup' of sorrow or of joy which we are mingling now, to be drunk hereafter.

เ

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Solomon likened Life to 'the silver cord' and the 'golden bowl;' Paul often compared it to a warfare, and the Great Teacher told us that the days of man were as grass, as a flower of the field, so he perisheth; Bunyan pictured Life as a long and wearied Pilgrimage up the Hill of Difficulty and through the Plains of Ease; Dr. Johnson compared it to an Eastern Caravansary; and we believe it is 'Poor Richard' who has a verse denoting Life as like ‘an Inn,’—

'Who goes the soonest has the least to pay ;'

the poet Pope says Life is 6

a taper wasting the instant it takes fire;' the painter Cole glowingly pictured upon his canvas the protracted 'Voyage' of Life; Tupper declares that

"Life is a strange avenue of various trees and flowers, Lightsome at commencement, but darkening to its end in a distant massy portal,"