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Caption: Book - History of the University (Nevins)
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320 STUDENTS AND STUDENT LIFE to the lawn in front of the library, and the fraternity and rooming-house porches are hung with swings by heavy chains and massed with mandolin-playing students. The Maypole dance, once a simple attraction on the site of the Woman's Building, with the spectators seated on the grass, now a huge pageant that draws a crowd to the bleachers to watch the Elizabethan and other folk figures, usually marks the beginning, on Thursday, of the Interscholastic week-end. These days of the Interscholastic are filled with more events than those of Home-coming, and bringing to the University not only alumni but the high school athletes of the State and their friends, draw an even greater number of visitors. The same evening sees the Stunt Show of the sororities, designed to assist the Y. W. C. A., and in nature like the Post-Exam Jubilee, though usually more clever, and always more delicately conceived. On Friday afternoon there is a combined track meet and baseball game on Illinois Field, with sometimes an exhibition drill, and that night the high school oratorical contest. Saturday morning the athletes of nearly a hundred high schools contend for first place; in the afternoon is another ball game; and at night comes the Interscholastic circus—the climax of the week. Opened by a circus parade of monstrous and unheard-of animals waBbling across the Field, their eyes glowing and their nostrils breathing flame, its three rings with forty different attractions, its two bands, its adept clowns, and the relay race run by champions of the different sororities, bring the whole to a welcome close. Commencement is less crowded than the two weeks preceding it. The seniors, graduate students, and faculty remain, but few others, for the Illinois summer is too busy to permit the three lower classes to loiter. The
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