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The Spike: or, Victoria College Review, October 1906

Capping Day

page 50

Capping Day

"He,
With an urbanity
Full of satanity,
Vexes humanity
With an inanity
Swollen with vanity,
Driving his hearers to muttered profanity."

Capping day written on mortarboards

TThe Capping Ceremony was held this year in the Concert Room of the Town Hall. As Victoria College is not a purely local institution, the City Fathers felt unable to shower upon us the further benefit of gracing our function with their presence. In spite, however, of this drawback there was a fair attendance of the public, who had come evidently expecting a recurrence of the usual disgraceful exhibitions, as our Chancellor has on so many occasions styled them. The public went away grievously disappointed; and yet the entertainment afforded was in its way somewhat unique. The most irreproachable sentiments evoked no sympathetic response from the students, who maintained throughout a freezing silence, unbroken even by the calculated flattery of the Chairman of the College Council. Prettily worded sentiments were uttered again and again, evidently in the hope of evoking the uproarious approbation of the gallery. When this was not forthcoming, the uneasiness of the orators and the abrupt curtailment of their flowery effusiveness amply repaid the students for their preconcerted self-repression.

Some of the more diminutive lady graduates found the last step in their academic career the hardest to negotiate, and received their diplomas from afar. The embarrassment of the Chairman of the Professorial Board at each successive refusal of his proffered help was a source of joy to the unsympathetic undergrad.

page 51

The harrassed and overworked law-student, who may be seen at all hours of the day drowning his worries, came in for what seemed to many an undue amount of commiseration at the hands of the newly appointed law professor. The latter expressed his conviction that it was the bounden duty of the various legal firms to release their clerks during the afternoon from the drudgery of stamp-licking, so as to permit of their advancing a little further upon their weary pilgrimage across the barren and thirsty desert of law.

The Chancellor next invited a student to orate from the gallery. The student in question, being taken quite unawares, had not prepared anything special, but moved by the evident zeal of a previous speaker, expressed the hope that some of the leading legal firms would help along the law library with spare copies of books. The hope was only a little one, and the appeal seems to have fallen on stony ground.

The Chancellor concluded a dismal function by complimenting the students upon their dutiful behaviour.

Capping Carnival.

"Every moment brings a treasure
Of its own especial pleasure;
Though the moments quickly die,
Greet them gaily as they fly."

We may safely affirm that this year's Capping Carnival was the most successful in the annals of our College. The entertainment itself was a refreshing change from the "humourosities" of previous years, and the students had, for once, taken up the work of preparation in a serious and enthusiastic spirit. One of the principals in the composition of the "Extravaganza" was unfortunately unable to superintend the arduous task of rehearsal, but Miss Smith gallantly came forward and filled the breach with complete success. Our thanks are specially due to her, and to Misses Tooman and Frühauf, for their unsparing efforts to make the Carnival a thorough success.

page 52

The first portion of the programme consisted of the usual College songs, rendered for the first time in our history with something approaching that full-throated abandon required in a College song. Solos were contributed by Miss Strack, Miss Martin, F. P. Wilson and B. Jacobs, and a 'cello solo was given by Mr. Levvey. One of the most successful items was that of H. O'Leary and W. Perry, who expatiated in the Hibernian accent of Dooley and Hinnisey upon the "Education of the Young."

The remaining part of the programme was occupied with what was fairly aptly described as "Musical Extravaganza," consisting of four tableaux and bearing the rather mysterious title of "Munchums, or The Origin of Genus." The perpetrators were F. A. de la Mare, S. S. Mackenzie, and S. Eichelbaum.

The first tableau (representing the Stone Age) disclosed a tuneful band of hairy, grimy barbarians, scantily attired in odoriferous sheep skins which, judging from the by-play, were also pestiferous. A chancellor (Mr. A. W. Newton), whose costume would surely have aroused the blood-thirsty envy of many a prehistoric Briton, vainly strove to impress upon these noisome undergrads, a sense of his own importance and of the diguity appertaining to his office. In the second tableau (the Iron Age) W. Lyon, with an excellent solo effort, introduced a stalwart group of navvies promiscuously brandishing picks and shovels, and recounting the story of our exertions "on the old clay patch at Kelburne." The third tableau (the Historic Age) had reference to the commission recently set up to gather information from pioneer colonists. Miss D. Isaacs, as lady-commissioner, noted carefully much amusing and extremely improbable information from a hoary old salt (B. Jacobs), who furnished her with a particularly thrilling account of his adventures on this island when he and his "pal" Cook first landed. Emphasis was given to his graphic description of the "'ungry warriors," by the entrance of a fearsome band of Maoris in their ancestral garb, who, with quivering taiahas and glittering meres, gave several hakas and war-songs in a style which pleased the audience vastly and reflected much credit upon their leader A. H. Bogle. In the final tableau, entitled the Tabloid Age, we have a revelation of the future apotheosis of cram. Here T. N. Holmden, aided by a docile band of students dressed in ghoulish vestments, which page 53 at once brought to mind pictures of the ancient inquisitors, regaled us, in what was the cleverest topical song of the evening, with an account of the joys awaiting the student of the future age—that happpy time when all knowledge shall be dispensed in the form of pillules, when "muscle and thew and bone" shall be to the student entirely negligible assets.

This progamme was repeated on the Saturday evening before a good audience.

The Supper.

"Now to the banquet we press,
Now for the eggs and ham,
Now for the mustard and cress,
Now for the strawberry jam."

This year a separate hall was engaged for the Graduates' Supper, but even the additional space thus afforded was taxed to the uttermost. After some had had a hearty supper, the usual toast-list was proceeded with, and the medals won at the Easter Tournament presented. The only novel feature was the presentation to G. F. Dixon by our tournament representatives, of a biscuit barrel suitably inscribed. Owing to the ambiguous nature of E. J. Fitzgibbon's remarks in making the presentation, certain students and professors expressed considerable surprise that the engagement had not been announced in our last issue.

After the toasts had been honoured, dancing was begun and continued far into the small hours of the morning.

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