"Johnny Crimson, a Legend of Hollis Hall," by Percy Wallace MacKaye '97, is a rhyme of some fifteen pages after the manner of "T' was the Night Before Christmas." The tale is a fanciful bit of work. It is the story of a freshman of the class of 1798 who "with heavy reel on tipsy heel," staggers out from Boston to be enticed out of his room by grave yard spooks who lead him a wild dance and conclude by tumbling him into the pump trough "as limp as a lump," "while one young Vandal keeps plying the handle." The rhyme suggests in the epilogue, that when he was questioned by "Prexy" Walker next morning,

"quite all in vain did Johnny explain,

"In words that flowed thick from his muddled brain,

"That he knew by their looks the rascals were spooks."

It is rather an ambitious effort to put this story into rhyme or even into print, for there is nothing extraordinary in it either in point of conception or treatment. Indeed in regard to the latter, one is amused to find now and then the rhyme lapsing into prose. It is hardly possible to predict that the rhyme will command any special interest from students to whom it must be supposed it is meant to appeal.

On the title page is a picture, after an old print, of Holden, Hollis and Harvard Halls in 1794.