A while with us they strayed
Through Academic bowers,
Now, falling gently by our side,

They sleep 'neath funeral flowers.

ALUMNI, brothers all,

We give you hearty cheer
In the Assembly of the tribes-
The Nations gathered here.

Renew we now the pledge

That ne'er was known to fail,-
The talisman of victory-

The memory of YALE!

Where beats a filial heart

Responsive to thy call,

A kindly welcome to thee-YALE,
The "Mother of us all!"

Noctes Valenses.

No. III.

SCENE I-College Fence. PRESENT-Shandy, Mishkan, Bilhath, Shanghai and Major Gahagan.

MISHKAN. Have any pieces for the LIT. been handed in yet? SHANGHAI. Not one; what Hood calls the "Type-us" fever, isn't very prevalent in College at the present time.

MISHKAN. What are you going to do about it?

SHANGHAI.—I hardly know yet. I haven't had anything very clearly in view in my "mind's eye."

GAHAGAN.-I wish you wouldn't get off such a hackneyed quotation as that, at any rate. Now I take particular credit to myself, that I wrote an article on Names, without introducing that question, which, according to Shakespeare, Miss Capulet asks of Mr. Montague.

SHANDY.-Very commendable in you to omit that, but yet there is very much more on the same subject, which you ought not to have omitted. Names rule the world. In everything, in every sit

uation or condition, whether poor or rich, good or bad, well or sick we are governed by them.

BILHATH.-That is a very common remark, but like many other common remarks, it will prove when carefully examined to be decidedly wanting in truth.

SHANDY.-You doubt my assertion. I will endeavor to prove it to your satisfaction. Take the last case I mentioned, that of sickness, where, if anywhere, one would imagine that names exert no influence, and yet see the power they do wield. Some diseases it is almost romantic to have, but about others you can throw no charms of fancy, nor excite any feeling. Every one remembers that poem of Percival on Consumption, commencing,

"There is a sweetness in woman's decay,

When the light of beauty is fading away."

Now I defy any poet to write very affecting lines on a death from quinzy or inflammation of the bowels. And, that this is not a mere fancy of my own, I can bring forward the authority of another great poet. Lord Byron says that love can stand against all noble maladies, but vulgar illnesses ruin him completely; after enumerating several he goes on to say,

"But worst of all is nausea, or pain

About the lower regions of the bowels;

Love, who heroically breathes a vein,

Shrinks from the application of hot towels,
And purgatives are dangerous to his reign,
Sea-sickness death."

It makes all the difference in the world, let me assure you, as to the name of the disease, by which a man goes off. There is just as much distinction between dying of the measles and dying of the consumption, as there is between getting drowned in the ocean or in a canal. So far as regards the feelings of the individual undergoing the operation, I suppose the one place is full as pleasant as the other, but for the looks or name of the thing, almost any per son would prefer the "rock-bound floor" of the sea, to the mud of the "raging canawl."

SHANGHAI. That is very true, but not necessarily for the reason you give. If a man gets drowned in a canal, that very fact is prima facie evidence that he was drunk.

SHANDY.-Your ridicule doesn't disturb my theory. But I go

still further, and make another distinction. When an author begins to be admired, he is called by his family name; but when he begins

To be sure, we have too high a Spenser, Shakespeare or Wordstheir first names; and indeed to

to be loved, by his christian one. reverence for some men, such as worth, to think of calling them by but very few are they known. Yet every one speaks of Tom Hood or of Charles Lamb, because both of these men are loved by every man who knows anything about them at all.

GAHAGAN.-Begging your pardon, we don't call Tennyson, Alfred, or Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth.

SHANDY. It is a pity, that when I am making out a fine sounding theory, you can't keep from bringing in your troublesome facts to disturb it.

SHANGHAI.-But gentlemen, all this conversation isn't furnishing articles for the LIT. How I am to fill up the Magazine is the question with me.

GAHAGAN.-I will tell you how to get up one article. Write to Ticknor and Fields, of Boston, and procure a sufficient number of steel-plate engravings of Tennyson to fill up your edition. Then let Mishkan write a poem, and I'll undertake to have it put in as "written expressly for the YALE LITERARY MAGAZINE, by Alfred Tennyson," and agree to do all the subsequent lying that may be necessary.

BILHATH.-Tennyson is a spoopse.

GAHAGAN.-There will be a fight yet here. A man so devoid of all ideas of what constitutes true poetry as to make such a remark as that, doesn't deserve christian treatment at the hands of any one.

SHANDY.-Talking of poetry, an enthusiastic young man suggested to me the other day, that we offer a five dollar prize for the best College song. Bilhath, how much money is there in the treasury?

BILHATH.-Considerable, I imagine. We haven't been stuck much more than thirty dollars on each one of the first two numbers. SHANGHAI. Anyway, Mishkan, I propose you write a song for the especial use of the Editors of the LIT.

MISHKAN. You'd want it to the tune of Litoria, wouldn't you? SHANGHAI. That pun is too exceedingly vile to be countenanced. MISHKAN. There you display your ignorance of the pun-nature. The very essence of an excellent pun is, that it shall be an exceedingly mean one. The ideal of a perfect pun is a pun so outrageously, so excruciatingly bad, that it is good.

SHANGHAI. On that principle, I'll admit your puns to be superlatively excellent.

BILHATH. I've been studying diligently to find out the apex of Mishkan's joke, and am just beginning to see through it. I would propose for the benefit of the College world, Mishkan, that two pages of every number of the LIT. be set aside for a list of your puns in that number, with a commentary and notes critical and explanatory attached, so that they can be understood without any violent mental effort.

GAHAGAN.-What a fortunate people the Germans must be! I have heard it said that there is only one pun in the whole language, which by way of distinction, is called "The Pun." I'll not, however, vouch for the truth of that remark.

BILHATH-A case of tender conscience, unparallelled on your part, Major. But heavens! what a pretty little girl!

SHANDY.-Do let little girls alone, and attend to more important

matters.

BILHATH.-Don't despise little girls, Tristram; they'll grow up some time. Your future wife is undoubtedly at the present time quite young.

SHANDY.-Exceedingly young, I imagine.

BILHATH.-Well, think of her, often then; does'nt Martin Farquhar Tupper say :

"If thou art to have a wife of thy youth, she is now living on the earth; Therefore think of her and pray for her weal; yea though thou hast not scen her ?"

GAHAGAN. It might perhaps be expected that a person who would call Tennyson a spoopse, would quote from such an author as Mar tin Farquhar Tupper; but for the credit of Yale I am sorry for it. If there is one man in the list of English poets, who has obtained a reputation by the most unconscionable puffing and quackery, that man is Martin Farquhar Tupper. He is a perfect nincompoop, a shikepoke, a numskull, a ninny, a squirt; yes, gentlemen, a squirt of the most unmitigated nature-in fine, a complete squirt. Language is not base enough, language is not vituperative enough to express the superlative asininity of his drivelling productions. It would speak well for the intellectual taste of the nineteenth century, that the works of a man like him should pass through their seventieth or eightieth edition, while those of the greatest men of our times scarcely ever reach their tenth, did we not know by what means

his balderdash has gained notoriety. The idea of such a man as he, attempting to continue Coleridge's Christabel! But I'll stop here, for when I attempt to give my opinion of Mr. Tupper, words fail me. All existing languages are found wanting. Indeed, I despise the man so thoroughly that I can't speak of him decently, and I am fearful that in talking about him I may rise into abuse; and Heaven knows that abuse is altogether too great an honor for him.

SHANGHAI. Then in order to keep you from doing anything rash, I propose that we adjourn.

(Exeunt omnes.)

SCENE II.-Editor's Sanctum. Time 3 P. M. PRESENT-Shandy, Mishkan, Gahagan, and Shanghai.

SHANGHAI.-What has become of Bilhath?

MISHKAN-Out with the women, I suppose. I met him sailing down Chapel street, arrayed in gorgeous apparel, in full chase after a damsel, who from her appearance must have arrived at years of discretion a number of years ago.

SHANGHAI.-I am surprised that a man of your disposition didn't follow on too.

MISHKAN.-I beg leave to inform you I never was an antiquary. My tastes never ran in that line.

(Enter Bilhath.)

SHANDY.-I hope, Bilhath, you have got through with your female pursuits, and are prepared to attend to the business of this board.

BILHATH-My tardiness is excusable, for I have been spending the time with some of the best looking “quails" to be found in the city of Elms.

SHANDY.-Poh! there's not a beautiful specimen of the feminine gender to be found in New Haven, unless it is imported. They're not goodly to my sight.

BILHATH.-You sacrilegious villain, your remark displays nothing except your ignorance. Nowhere can you see beings more beautiful than in New Haven. Nowhere can you see eyes brighter, tresses

gayer, cheeks rosier, features lovelier, forms statelier, hearts purer, and dispositions sweeter, than in the city of Elms. Nowhere can you-can you-can you—

MISHKAN. See a greater number of flirts.