What bustle and excitement is a parade! It keeps sewing circles and church socials chattering for weeks before and days afterwards. It makes Pop misplace his glasses just fifteen minutes before the first band swings past Lexcord Green; Sally must have her face washed twice as a double protection against dirt; and Ma thinks, as the car turns the corner, that she didn't close the icebox door. For the neighbors know how long all the bands between Framingham and Lowell have been eking practice sounds out of trumpets, drums, bass horns, and still worse horns. Uniforms have been brushed free of winter dust, and as they form a marching line, how spry are the limbs and voices of the wearers.

Besides the people and the bands and those poor self-conscious, civic-minded unknowns herded between the organized noises are the officials. The expression on the face of Mayor Mansfield, of Boston, when he raised a flag at 8:45 yesterday morning can only be compared to Al Smith's when he laid the cornerstone for the Empire State Building. And even our zealous officials forget to recall, for Governor Hurley was discovered waiting for a parade on the Cambridge Common, while the affair went on somewhere near Harvard Square.

For the student a parade means disturbance in Widener, when he has really struggled to take himself there. The marathon is an exertion he cannot imagine, although a Dunster Funster, ironically enough, was among the list of entrants. To an Eliot House lad the parade had an intimate appeal, for his biddic had informed him that she would be marching. Most, in wondering what day of the week the University expected them to work--what with holidays and weekdays, could not but cry, with a Hearst-like flourish. "To the street, Harvard, and you shall see the noonday ride of Paul Revere."