The Dean's Dinner

Prexy is Host, at a Lavish Commemorative Banquet, to the Faculty of Arts

STEPHEN LEACOCK

DEAR Mr. Dean, I think it much completer, To voice tonight my sentiments in meter, This little thing—I ask your blessing on it— Is what we technically call a sonnet. Sonno, I sing, and Nitto, I do not, A derivation made up on the spot.

Here let me interject, to save confusion, There has not been the very least collusion, I had not given any intimation That I intended such an innovation, And if you find my verses poor and mean, Worthy professors, do not blame the Dean. For years I have dissembled; now you know it, My friends: behold in me an unknown poet, Careless of notoriety, of fame unthinking. But singing like a skylark after drinking. So tasting this good cheer from soup to Stilton, I can't remain a mute, inglorious Milton. Let every man pursue his different way And seek his life-work where he finds his pay. I leave to Walker, gas; to Caldwell, Kant; Adams, the rock; Penhallow keeps the plant; Let the bacilli stay where they belong, But leave to me the humble joy of song.

A sonnet did I say? Nay, I confess This is an epic, neither more nor less— Arts and the Men, I sing, for I am yearning, To sound the praise of Academic learning.

HOW start the theme with teeming fancies il fraught, How measure into feet the crowding thought, How mark the rhythm and divide the time, And bid the stubborn syllables to rhyme; In other words, how can I jam it, sir, In Professorial Pentameter? First, let me voice a wish I must avow The Board of Governors might see us now. That we might have, to make the tale complete, An Angus and a Greenshields, and a Fleet. Oh, sirs, this spectacle would make them feel That poor professors like a solid meal; That learning, since it is no hollow sham, Looks best with a distended diaphragm. Well may they boast among their employees, A group of smiling faces such as these; Yet, 'tis a theme on which I must not touch: In fairness be it said, we owe them much, And let us hope the future has in store That one and all shall shortly owe them more. Yes, let me voice this humble, earnest plea, Participated by this company— When next the stream of benefaction starts, Pray, pour it on the Faculty of Arts; Oh, Edward, William, Robert, James, and John, Delay no longer, kindly turn it on.

For this, the Faculty of Arts, is known Of other studies the foundation stone; It forms the base, however deeply hid, Of higher education's pyramid. Let medicine discourse in cultured tone, Of pickled corpse and dessicated bone, Yet let it answer, if it dares to speak, Who taught it how to name the bones in Greek?

Or let the scientist pursue his toil, Grease his machines with lubricating oil, Fling far the bridge and excavate the mine And bid the incandescent light to shine, Yet let him answer—will he dare to tell, Who tries to teach the engineer to spell? Or let the law, if proof be needed yet, To our great Faculty deny its debt, The Latin it must use to mystify Is raw material that we supply. The logic that Dean Walton takes his tricks on Is manufactured by Professor Hickson.

BUT I have said enough, I think, to show The debt of gratitude all others owe To this, our Faculty. Now let me come To details lying rather nearer home. And let me speak about the various parts That constitute this Faculty of Arts. This done, with your permission I will then Say something of our most distinguished men; And with all gentleness I will assign To each, a brief Thanksgiving Valentine.

Here first the Classics holds its honored place, The center stone of the aforesaid base; In education's whirling stream and jam, It lies embedded like a coffer dam. So deeply down do its foundations lie, Its worth is hidden from the common eye. The vulgar think the classics are a sham, O noble edifice, O Greek, O dam! Yet judge its worth when you can find them beaten, Messrs. Macnaughton, Peterson and Eaton; See where Macnaughton with imperious tread Rudely disturbs the archaeologic dead, Watch him receive in his extended hat The venal offering of the plutocrat. Watch this, my friends, and will you dare to say The study of the classics does not pay? Or see, a Peterson with spade and hoe In ducal vaults exhumes a Cicero: Carries it gently to the outer air, Wipes off the dust with Caledonian care, And straightway to the classics is annexed A new and highly controversial text, A noble feat; and yet, alas! I own, Like Dr. Cook he did it all alone; When next in search of Cicero you go, Take, Mr. Principal, an Eskimo.

Lo! Mathematics hidden from the view Behind its symbols, though it may be true, The upper part of it so wrapped in darkness That no one sees it but Professor Harkness. The very Queen of Sciences, they say: It is, for the professor anyway.

In lectures he is not obliged to talk, Needs but a blackboard and a bit of chalk, A set of problems given as a test, Then down he sits—the students do the rest; Forgive me if I fall into ecstatics, Would I were taught to teach the Mathematics!

Charming as is the mathematic mystery, It will not stand comparison with history; Imagine what a splendid tour de force, To trace the Norman Conquest to its source; Think of a man that, still quite young, was skilled

To analyze the Mediaeval Guild: To follow it and trace its root-age down, Deep buried in the Anglo-Saxon town: Yet such is Colby: Oh, what joy complete, To terrorize the man upon the street; To hush his crude attempts at conversation By quoting pages of the Reformation; And, that his cup of misery be filled, To crush him with the Mediaeval Guild. Oh, Charles, with all thy knowledge is it right That thou art not beside the board tonight? That thou shouldst set thy brain to overplan The simple, unsuspecting business man; See: at the bidding of the gentle sage The Caligraph creeps noiseless o'er the page; The clatter of the noisy key is dumb, Destroyed by Colby's patent Liquid Gum. O Second Gutenberg, God speed the ship That bears you on your European trip, Let bulky Germans drink your health in bock, And frantic Frenchmen clamor for the stock And, Noiseless Charles, when you have gained your knowledge Of business life, come back to our old college.

SOURELY no nobler theme the poet chants Than the soft science of the blooming plants. How sweet it were in a sequestered spot To classify the wild forget-me-not; To twine about the overheated brow The coolness of the rhododendron bough; To lie recumbent on a mossy heap And draw a salary, while fast asleep. Dr. Penhallow, it would need a Herrick To sing your work, and that of Carrie Derick. Nor shall my halting Muse in vain essay Such sweet co-operation to portray.

Would that your time allowed you, once or twice;

To drink to Barnes, discoverer of ice:

All unsuspected in the river bed The tiny frazil reared its dainty head.

No one had known for centuries untold Precisely why the climate was so cold:

Why winter should be vigorous and rude In such a truly Southern latitude.

Barnes, after years of thought and anxious teasing,

Decided that there must be something freezing. He stopped his lectures, bundled up his pack Braved untold hardships at the Frontenac,

(Continued on page 96)

{Continued from page 56)

And then, within a stone's throw of Quebec,

Found ice that no one ventured to suspect.

Let ice and snowdrift sing their requiem,

Our Howard Barnes is going to settle them.

A fairer prospect opens to the eye;

America beneath a sultry sky;

Already the prophetic eye of hope

Sees grape vines circle the Laurentian slope;

Palms and pomegranates with the breezes play,

And luscious figs droop over Hudson Bay.

Last, but of all departments valued most,

Is that illuminated by our host:

English! the very word inspires the thought

With memories of a noble nation fraught.

English, the tongue of Tennyson, of Gray,

Or Milton, Bunyan, Goldsmith, Pope and Gay,

Of still more widely circulated names.

Of Henty, E. P. Row and Henry James;

The tongue of Robbie Burns and Walter Scott—

You interrupt me? Strictly, it was not.

But let me tell you, sirs, who dares to fight it?

Let Saxon speak it, but let Scotchmen write it;

English, to add to this enumeration,

The tongue today of every place and nation,

For cultured Chinaman, for wild Hindu,

For traveling Russian nothing else will do.

The tongue of every race and every clan,

Just think how needful to a gentleman:

Varied as are the forms of English speech,

Our Dean has got his solid grip on each;

Here sits a man who positively knows

The whole life history of our nation's prose;

Who can, and will, at your request rehearse;

One thousand lines of Anglo-Saxon verse.

To him, we feel it in his every look,

Chaucer and Gower are an open book;

He finds the verse of Cædmon light and breezy,

And Beowulf, if anything, too easy;

Nay, bless my soul, the man can even read

The writings of the Venerable Bede.

ET not for this, or not for this alone,

I We love to claim him as our very own;

Rich in the scholar's gift in every part,

Yet more we prize the richness of his heart:

The cheerful humor nothing can dismay,

Unruffled by the cares of day to day;

The industry that does not flag or shirk,

That stints not trouble, measures not its

The kindness never failing, and the hand

Outstretched to help, the brain to understand,

With ready sympathy, another's cares,

And lighten thus the burden that it shares,

Oh, sirs, if this in English may be sought,

Would that such English were more widely taught.

Let him recite us Cædmon, if he will,

Or sing Beowulf; we will be still:

Nay, let him quote us, if he feel the need, Whole chapters from the Venerable Bede;

Still shall we cry the pauses in between:

God's blessing on our well-beloved Dean.