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Terpsichore, read at an annual dinner of the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge, sparkles throughout with keen wit, quaint conceits, and satire so good-natured that the subjects of it can enjoy it as heartily as their neighbors. Witness this thrust at our German-English writers:
He composed an "Odyssey" or epic poem on the adventures of Ulysses, consisting of four- and-twenty books, having entirely banished the letter A from his first book, which was called Alpha, as lucus a non lucendo, because there was not an Alpha in it. His second book was inscribed Beta for the same reason.
"Well, you see," the young man flushed, "not not any real name; just the Greek letters, Phi Beta Ki." He stepped into the cabinet and, with deft fingers, drew with charcoal the characters. "Like that," he smiled. "Yes," she smiled back, "there is one." "Grand!" he exclaimed. "Let's get it at once, shall we?" They hastened up the hill.
"Where are you, Beta? Come! I'm home again!" Quickly he scrambled along the broken terrace, stumbling in his haste over loose rocks and debris. Now he had reached the turn. The fire was in sight. "Beta!" again he hailed. "O-he! Beatrice!" Still no answer, nor any sign from her.
It took another month to find out exactly how the stuff affected the human nervous system, and they almost wrecked their own nervous systems in the process. The real villain, they discovered, was the incredible-looking long-chain compound alluded to in the original notes as Ingredient Beta; its principal physiological effect was to greatly increase the sensitivity of the aural nerves.
A glow shone in the cheeks of the spokesman a clean- looking youth with black curly hair and round pink and white cheeks, the son of a Presbyterian minister from Iowa. "You have been picked by our fellows to be one of us," said the spokesman. "We want you to become an Alpha Beta Pi. It is a grand fraternity with chapters in the best schools in the country. Let me tell you."
Geography is another word which came, through French and Latin, from the Greeks, to whom it meant that which is written about the earth. The word grammar came in the same way. The word alphabet is made by joining together the names of the first two Greek letters, alpha and beta.
No astronomer who happens to be engaged in this part of the sky ever fails, unless his attention is absorbed by something of special interest, to glance at beta Libræ, which is famous as the only naked-eye star having a decided green color. The hue is pale, but manifest. Is the slight green tint perceptible in Sirius variable? I am sometimes disposed to think it is.
He returned after a while, and together they climbed over the debris and ruins to the upper rooms which had been their home during the first few days after the awakening. The silence of death that lay over the place was appalling that and the relics of the frightful battle. But they had their work to do; they had to face the facts. "We're not children, Beta," said the man.
Presently one addressed me by name, and, on inquiry, I found him to be the gentleman who was with me in the pulpit as Orator on the occasion of another Phi Beta Kappa poem, one delivered at New Haven. The party were very courteous and friendly, and contributed in various ways to our comfort.
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