Word: class-day
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...spreads at 15 Grays and 8 Highland Street will be held Class-day...
There will be a radical change in Class-day this year in the introduction of the cap and gown, but aside from this, to the ordinary observer, the exercises will be essentially the same as last year. Yet there are certain changes in detail every year and it is by these small changes that Class-day has developed from a very simple observance to its present form. It may be interesting to students themselves as well as to their friends to know just what the history of Class-day...
...been said that something like the present literary exercises of Class-day existed from the earliest years of the college, and records of them can be traced as far back as 1648. The exercises were of an extremely serious and weighty nature and little resembled those of the present day. The size of the graduating classes in the early years of the college made the present institution of Class-day impossible. Like other customs, then, at Harvard, Class-day is a development. It was never formally created but grew from an intermingling of several ancient festivities, more especially those...
...probable that the literary exercises on Class-day are due to an attempt by the Overseers, beginning in 1754, to improve the elocution of the students by requiring the public recitation of dialogues, translated from Latin into English; for Class-day was then less a Senior's day than now, and was chiefly under the control of the college authorities. This very likely suggested the idea to the undergraduates and created among them an ambition for further displays of oratory...
Just when it occurred to them to have literary exercises of their own it is impossible to say. The first reliable date of an organization of the Senior class for this purpose is 1760 and in 1776 the list of annual Class-day orators begins. Ten years later a poet was added. Until then the exercises had consisted of a Latin oration sandwiched in between two prayers by the President of the college...