A Lesson in Manners

Like all other colleges, Yale will soon hold a commencement. Like all other colleges, Yale will then be revisited by her alumni. Like all other colleges, Yale will have certain festive disorders, among alumni and undergraduates, on the occasion. Like others, she hopes that the older men will set a good example for the younger.

Like a few other colleges, but not many, Yale intimated this hope to the older men when she issued her commencement invitations. Like no other, Yale did this in such a way that the intimation savored of a lecture on party manners. A graduate of the class of 1875, resenting this lecture, sat down in gentlemanly wroth, called for his stenographer, wrote an irate letter to The New York Times:

". . . Aged men should be silent, if possible, occasionally, as to politics, religion, education and science. But old men, if they have not lived in seclusion, should know something of manners. I bow before Dr. Angell [President James Rowland Angell] and his office; but he is young; and I may bend, from the frosty pinnacle of my great age, to speak to him, with paternal frankness, as to certain matters of ceremony.

''I must decline Dr. Angell's invitation because it has been hinted that we old men are not desired beneath the elms. The college secretary has permitted a public statement that the college officers fear that returning graduates will drink, unlawfully and riotously. An official college paper tells us also that the college authorities wish the visiting graduates to refrain, in New Haven, from any public or private breach of the law. These unflattering suggestions have been published in many newspapers. Dr. Angell thus seems to say: T deplore your coming. I am anxious lest you set a bad example to our young people. I am afraid that you will break a law which I love and respect, and get us in discredit with the police. I am afraid that you will get drunk on my doorstep. . . .'

"I would have my grandson study Rabelais, Montaigne, Ben Franklin and Li T'ai-Po, rather than William Jennings Bryan. Nor do I despair of students who, at times, unbend. They may become lovable conservatives, pillars of state, like Samuel Johnson and Pepys.

"Dr. Angell's deans, secretaries and proctors seem to have joined the new fanatics, telling us to abstain from thought and wine. . . .

"Some of us, therefore, intend to celebrate our Yale anniversary in Montreal, with discreet and well-ordered dinners, such as are customary and lawful in civilized societies; and by staying away from New Haven."

(Signed) "NEWELL MARTIN."