Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska

Commencement week at Notre Dame ended in a blaze of glory. Multitudes of guests who had been camping for a night or two in the recitation rooms our temporary dormitories gave themselves up to the boyish delights of school life, and set numerous examples which the students were only too glad to follow. The boat race on the lake was a picture; the champion baseball match, a companion piece; but the highly decorated prize scholars, glittering with gold and silver medals, and badges of satin and bullion; the bevies of beautiful girls who for once once only in the year were given the liberty of the lawns, the campus, and the winding forest ways, that make of Notre Dame an elysium in summer; the frequent and inspiring blasts of the University Band, and the general joy that filled every heart to overflowing, rendered the last day of the scholastic year romantic to a degree and memorable forever. There was no sleep during the closing night not one solitary wink; all laws were dead letters alas that they should so soon arise again from the dead! and when the wreath of stars that crowns the golden statue of Our Lady on the high dome, two hundred feet in air, and the wide sweeping crescent under her shining feet, burst suddenly into flame, and shed a lustre that was welcomed for miles and miles over the plains of Indiana then, I assure you, we were all so deeply touched that we knew not whether to laugh or to weep, and I shall not tell you which we did.