New Haven Daily Herald

COMMENCEMENT WEEK.
This is a week fraught with forty thousand delightful associations and reminiscences, both to our good citizens and others. These reminiscences and associations differing too, according to character and occupation.— The merchant expects to make twice as much "cash" this week as usual, from the great influx of strangers; the shoemaker tailor and hatter to sell twice as much from their several stocks; boarding houses are to be crammed, and good fat prices are to be the condition of this double stowage on the part of landlord and lady; and butchers expect to look twice as fat and happy, from the immense amount of brawn and vegetable that is to be trundled off from their several stations, to fill up the capacious and insatiable maw of an eager, excited, bustling, jostling, roaring, hungry population; while many a fair lady, or bevy of them, is to sit at the window, or in other public places, and watch either the modest face of some favorite beau, fresh from the senior class with honors blushing thick upon him, or catch in the crowd the changed face of some old returned favorite now after an absence of four, eight, twelve twenty (?) years. Even the Doctors are to get rich faster this week than any other—(always excepting fourth of July, when as a matter of course a half a dozen legs are to be broken and eyes put out, from frightened horses and the patriotic use of gun powder)— since all this stuffing, cramming, eating and noise of boys, bells, beaux and lady belles, cannot be expected to take place but at the expense of some scores of heads, backs and elbows, and the serious disturbance of immeasurable quantities of "gastric juice" and other fluids. Success to them!
None of the associations and reminiscences of this week are more delightful, than those of the old member of College. He possibly, may think of the glorious delights of eating and drinking—(alas, that so many of us should)—but yet there are with him some other feelings, a little more elevated than these, and affording him we will venture to say quite as much happiness. College life has that about it that none but those who have passed it, or are passing, can know.— Perhaps no place in the world, after the period of childhood, so fastens on the heart as this. It is a fact in philosophy and daily experience, that any scene with which is connected excited feeling and mental activity, whether pleasurable or otherwise, fastens with double energy on the memory and heart. Thus even prisoners, after twenty, thirty, forty years captivity, go back to their dungeons with a sort of pleasure. College is not a dungeon, be it understood, nor is its life an imprisonment; but there is that in and about College life, that perhaps keeps the mind and heart more awake either for pleasure or pain, than any other part of existence; and this it is perhaps that so ties a graduate to the memory of the past, and so makes him act (to the eyes of many) like a "right down" boy, or a fellow out of his wits, when he gets back for a time to the scenes of other days. Just look at two classmates, separated some ten or twenty years since,—why, their politeness and respect for others seem to go to the winds; for put them down where you will they forget every body else, and can only talk of old College jokes, fun, trouble, nonsense and—the ladies.
Occasionally you find one—ah, yes—with a long face and a sad heart. And yet here it is pleasant to keep your eye on that same doleful physiognomy, and see how the spirit of early fun and frolic is trying to chase off the clouds gathered about his eyes, and creep over his face. True, the intervening space since his departure and return, has that in it calculated to make a man think. He has tried life with eager heart and hope—perhaps it has disappointed him;—a cold world has poured back over the delightful and fair garden of his heart its more cold and bitter waters. Perhaps his heart has been crushed : —the green graves of one and another—loved companions or children—stretch along back to the days of College excitement and intimacy. He may also be the victim of inveterate disease, and he toils along over the face of earth, like one who has done his work and is waiting for his departure. Some have come perhaps as returned missionaries, after a half a life's absence, from the China river, the hills of Persia, or the inlands of the sea; and life in these places, contrasted with the beauty, peace and life of a land of truth and religion, has brought clouds over his otherwise sunny face, and into his sunnier heart. These things should make a man think.— True—but after all, see how the spirit of fun and happiness is trying to get the better of him, and thus prove both to himself and those who look at him the assertion, that this day—Commencement Week—its bustle and roar—must be set down—that's certain—as among the glories of "Old New Haven."