With the appearance of caps and gowns yesterday came the usual startling revelations. Friends whom we had always held in high regard betrayed a lamentable lack of acquaintance with Latin. That yellow stain upon the Senior's vestment of culture mars the reputations of men who once walked in high honor among us.
Why, one is moved to ask, is this public stigma fastened upon the Philistine who has never studied Latin, or upon that more unfortunate person who failed to study it enough? The punishment meted out in Hawthorne's "Scarlet Letter" has always seemed to us eminently fitting; yet we had never thought the mere non-Latinist deserved such a brand. But perhaps it is for the benefit of the public. Peter Barnum said the public liked to be fooled; and we certainly fool the public with our pompous scientific degree. Meanwhile, the initiated know that the yellow crow's-foot indicates "not knowledge of science, but ignorance of Latin"; and they wonder even at the steadfastness of tradition.
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