On all sides these days one hears the questions "What is Harvardmanship?" "What sets the expert in Harvardmanship apart from the common herd?" You yourselves have no doubt asked these very questions in your hearts and never receiver an answer.

The first point that must be cleared up is that of nomenclature. The expert in Harvardmanship is called a Harvardman--all one word: Harvardman. He should never be confused with the ordinary Harvard man--two words: Harvard man--who is simply a man who goes to Harvard.

What, then, is Harvardmanship? Briefly, it is the Art of Overwhelming Friends and Stupefying People. Many of you, of course, have been practicing this art unconsciously, overwhelming a friend here or stupefying a roommate there, by instinct alone. And the history of amateur Harvardmanship goes back many centuries to a bright spring day in 1641, when Abijah Winthrop appeared for a Latin lesson dressed in a toga, murmuring that he felt closer to the spirit of ancient Rome that way. This so unnerved his tutor that he failed to discover that Abijah had not prepared his lesson.

This article is the text of the Ivy Oration delivered at Class Day last June by the former Associate Editorial Chairman of the CRIMSON.

But this was amateur Harvardmanship. Only in the last two decades have we seen the rise of the systematic Harvardman. The earliest of these was James FitzJames who worked out of Lowell House in the middle thirties. His favorite device was to disappear suddenly from College midway through January Reading Period, just about the time his friends began studing in earnest. Then, on the day of his first exam, he would return, strolling into the examination room five minutes late, dressed in a light Palm Beach suit and heavily tanned. Sitting down next to a friend he would inspect his exam casually.

'Thought I Had an Exam'

FitzJames: I rather thought I had an exam today. Hmm...this doesn't look very hard...

Layman (awed): Where have you been?

FitzJames: Been? Oh, Bahamas Nice people...

Layman: Who?

FitzJames (absorbed in his exam): wonderful hosts the Duke and Duchess...Kept me going all the time...yacht...white tie quite crumpled...

The effect on his friends was doubled when he told them casually that he had received an A in the course. In point of fact FitzJames had been holed up in a miserable rented room in Boston, with a sunlamp and all the reading assignment including the optional books, and had been working like a dog for two weeks.

But FitzJames was really no more than a crude pioneer compared to P. J. Asquith, also of Lowell. Asquith maintained for four brilliant years the illusion that he never went to lectures, and made his name by affecting complete indifference to all exams. He went to great lengths to obtain lecture notes: reading those of his friends late at light when they were asleep, attending vital lectures in exotic disguises, and so forth. Thus he would be completely prepared when the inevitable friend broached the topic of the imminent hour exam.

'Exam? What Course?'

Roommate: You all set for the exam tomorrow?