Smudged Salute

In the fateful December of 1776, in Williamsburg, Revolutionary capital of Virginia, five students of substance at the College of William & Mary were sufficiently bored with the patriotic hullabaloo to spend their time founding the world's first Greek Letter fraternity. Named Phi Beta Kappa,* it was replete with key, motto, initiation rites and a secret salute. So secret was its salute that the founders, who had described it in their minutes, hastily smudged out the last part of the description, when Lord Cornwallis' troops began to plunder Williamsburg.

Half a century later Phi Beta Kappa gave up its secrets to become a national honorary scholastic society. Only the first part of the salute, a handshake with the ring and little fingers folded back in the palm of the hand, remained as an induction ceremony. Soon there was no living person who knew what followed the handshake in the original salute.

Recently members of the William & Mary chapter, curious about the smudged minutes, sent them to Bert C. Farrar, a U. S. Treasury expert in Washington whose job is to read illegible documents. Using a powerful camera, hawk-eyed Expert Farrar last week deciphered this passage: "For the better distinction of the fraternity between themselves, in any foreign country or place, it is resolved that a salutation of the clasp of the hands, together with an immediate stroke across the mouth with the back of the same hand, and a return [salute] with the hand [?] used by the saluted, be hereby established and ordained."

*Initials of a Greek motto meaning "Philosophy, Life's Guide."

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