It was not until 1889 that the pageant element began to take
a definite and conspicuous place in the Tree Day exercises.
The class of '89 in its senior year gave a masque in which tall
dryads, robed in green, played their dainty roles; and that same
year the freshmen, the class of 1892, gave the first Tree Day
dance: a very mild dance of pink and white English maidens around
a maypole--but the germ of all the Tree Day dances yet unborn.
In its senior year, 1892 celebrated the discovery of America by
a sort of kermess of Colonial and Indian dances with tableaux,
and ever since, from year to year, the wonder has grown; Zeus,
and Venus, and King Arthur have all held court and revel on the
Wellesley Campus. Every year the long procession across the green
grows longer, more beautiful, more elaborate; the dancing is more
exquisitely planned, more complex, more carefully rehearsed. In
the spring, Wellesley girls are twirling a-tiptoe in every moment
not spent in class; and in class their thoughts sometimes dance.
Indeed, the students of late years have begun to ask themselves
if it may not be possible to obtain quite as beautiful a result
with less expense of effort and time and money; for Tree Day,
the crowning delight of the year, would defeat its own end, which
is pure recreation, if its beauty became a tyrant.
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