Advertisement

TURKEY TALK

The Mail

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Here, far from the maddening Yard, in a room where typewriters click faster than the tongues of women, we pause to wish a day of good Thanksgiving to all at Harvard and at its fringes, to the high and the low, to President Pusey and the freshmen who know not his name to students who approve the CRIMSON and those who do not, to the advisers of Stevenson and those who advise the advisors. Without fear or favor, we give greeting to seniors sleeping peacefully in Widener's stalls, to professors who give lectures at the College and those who get lectures at home, to students with unwashed feet in Lamont, to the Superintendent of All Janitors, and to the mailman resting from his labours. To professors taking meals on the cheap in the drug stores, equally with the gang in the Faculty Club, and to students whose fathers went to Harvard along with those whose fathers chose to go to the dogs, we give a glad greeting.

Happy Thanksgiving day to the man who extended the hours at Lamont and to the staff which has to work them. A glad greeting to students who misapply their mathematics, to footballers out of training and wives on a diet, and a special thought for the lovers in Widener reference. Good resting to the students of Paleontology and Stratigraphy and those who converse in Advanced Mandarin, and happy times too for the men who sweep up leaves on windy days. Big eating and long sleeping to Faculty who cite the Fifth Amendment, to students walking Garden Street in black capes, and to sophomores parked in restricted areas. We think especially of the girls of Radcliffe College; may they continue to find romance in the classrooms and M.I.T. men in the quadrangle. A rich Thanksgiving Day to poets in search of a rhyme and playwrights without a play, to oarsmen out of practice, Romeos out of luck, and house masters out of pocket. A very well-stuffed and basted turkey to these people, and a generous second helping to the delinquents in the class on criminology.

Happy eating and sweet dreaming to the students of the Functions of a Complex Variable and to professors of law who neglect to cross on the red and yellow. To doctors of philosophy perishing for failure to publish and to brethren perishing because they have published, to old men reading Plato, to seniors with black goatees and to juniors cultivating Harvard's air of indifference by nodding in class, we extend a glad word. A day of rare Thanksgiving to Nieman and Ford Fellows and other itinerant scholars, and a thought for the girls sitting sideways on the Memorial Church steps. To frustrated souls reading Kinsey in the stacks, to writers whose books have not been reviewed, to students late for lectures, and lecturers who know no applause, a day of relaxation from care. High feasting, too, to the students of Comparative Morphology and the Geologic History of Vascular Plants. To the wives of the Masters and the masters of the wives, to examiners who give failures, and to the long hairs boycotting the barbers, a very good day indeed. We remember at this juncture the Lamont girls looking for contraband, professors who speak at dinner for 53 minutes exactly, and the man who dared to assume that George Bernard Shaw could be adequately covered in half a course. To all these good people, and to the Cottons and Mathers and Longfellows and Frosts, and to the Ivy League Colleges and the lesser lights, we offer our greetings for Thanksgiving Thursday. All hail to the well-basted Turkey! Let the gourmands sit up and the feasting begin! Desmond Stone

(Mr. Stone, a Nieman Fellow, is an editorial writer for the Southland (New Zealand) Times--ed.)

Advertisement
Advertisement