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The Spike: or, Victoria College Review, October 1906

Capping Carnival

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.