Once upon a time, as the Senior president explained, Mr. Hunnewell gave a silver pine to Mr. Durant. Wellesley was two years old at the time, and hard up for traditions; and it seemed almost inevitable that the College would still be celebrating Tree Day 74 years later--last Saturday, in fact. Tree Day, as the Senior president explained, is "one of Wellesley College's oldest and most colorful traditions." Most of the two thousand onlookers weren't too sure what was going on; but it was quite enough that it had been going on for one hell of a long time.

The Tree Day ballet, for example. It was titled "Gift of the Nile" which (the president also explained) is the allegorical name for Egypt. The dancers, who were leg make-up on their faces and held their elbows at right angles, managed to look quite Egyptian; their story involved a princess who had to choose between three suitors. One offered riches, another royal ancestry, and the last love--according to the twenty-five-cent libretto, which kept mum on her final choice. As a matter of fact, the outcome is still in doubt. The suitors could be distinguished only by their green, red, and blue cummerbunds, of which the princess chose the red; at this point, there was much cheering. I asked one of the applauds, an elderly alumna, who the princess had selected. "Why," she said, "it was the one in red, wasn't it?"

The winner of the crew race, later that afternoon, is also open to question. The sophomore were pulling abreast of the seniors at the finish line, and may have passed them, but few people really know. Immediately after the race, several theories were advanced as to the outcome, but scoring was forgotten as the crews formed a precarious "W," raised their oars, and sang their class crew songs.

There was much of the modern, too, juxtaposed with the traditional. At one point Wellesley President Clapp interrupted the program to say that "the trustees have empowered me to make an announcement about the new dormitories. The plans are completed. But we don't have the material."

"What we lack," Miss Clapp explained, "is the money."

The program then returned to the scheduled events. General MacAnthony told Cleopatra that it had been a long time since she came down to the U of Rome. Cleopatra, reflecting on her college days, later mentioned "I can still see my old house-mummy." Then, at a prearranged signal, freshmen and sophomores raced off to find the Tree; which, of course, is what the day is all about. The sophomore president had secretly planted a seedling a few days before; if the freshmen found it first, they could yell their class cheer for the first time.

As it turned out though, they didn't. The sophs had been tipped off, but were sporting about their victory. As a freshman described it to me, "First the sophs made us walk barefoot in a stagnant pool and poison ivy--but they let us give our cheer!"