Vol.xxxix

Nol.

HAVE Dr. David Starr Jordan's authority for it that the trappings and ceremony of the old Eulong to a dark age, and that it is the blessed privilege of modern education to shake off the gold tape and useless ritual that characterize the great Continental seats of learning even to this day. We all have profound respect for the educated common sense of the President of Stanford University, and give due credit to his part in infusing into the institution at Palo Alto the progressive spirit of the age, yet it seems to an extent a practical refutation of Dr. Jordan's theories that the very university over which he presides should be leaning more and more every year toward ceremony and parade, and that the collegians, however grounded in scientific lore and utilitarian learning, manifest a yearning for display that at times equals that of the medieval founders of the miracle plays.

have gained great favor at the University of California, more especailly since the advent of President Benj. Ide Wheeler, who did much to make compulsory the gorgeous annual commencement parade through the campus, graduates and faculty appearing in caps and gowns, and each wearing the distinctive silken hood of the doctor of laws, medicine or philosophy, the master of arts and the bachelor of arts.

Only second to this in solemn impressiveness is the laying of the senior class plate, which occurs during commence

ment week at Stanford. This beautiful ceremony was inaugurated by Stanford's pioneer class ('95), who caused to be laid into the pavement of the quadrangle a bronze plate bearing the numerals of the class. The "'95 plate" was set into a square directly in front of where the Memorial Chapel now stands, and each succeeding class ha followed the custom by planting a plate in a line with the original square. Today the short row of seven plates marks with symbolic significance the history of the university, just as, in long years to come, the ever-increasing line of metal pavement shall