When the nondescript band, which wailed weird music - surely futurist melody - from strange strings and reedy pipes, passed at noon over the bridge which spans the Leith Stream, leading in its wake such a cortege of hilarious nonsense as has not been seen since last year, there broke out on the twin rivers of faces that lined the way a wide smile of merriment which rippled down back thoroughfares and around corners into George street, and there, spreading out over the lake of densely-packed humanity, surged down over the Octagon and to the far stretches of Princes street, travelling always slightly in advance of the merry men by whose quaint fooling it had been stirred.
Turning again, with the jovial blades ever in its wake, it recurred along the way it had come, tossing itself up to where high windows and balconies afforded rare vantage for the fortunate, and embracing all in its wide sweep, till it reached again the place of its origin, the big University building, and there it remained.
For yesterday was the gala day of the students, when books were thrown to the winds and happy chaos reigned supreme.
They might wonder - the staid folk of academic Dunedin - that one serious under-graduate should, on a certain day in the year, hurl in this corner his dignified gown and in that his learned mortar-board, and divesting himself of studious calm and prim propriety, don the flouncing skirt and visible lingerie of the schoolgirl, and flap absurd plaits in the faces of his amused townspeople; or that another, transformed into a realistic wahine, should stalk solemnly out of the cloisters of his seat of learning, and prowling skittishly through the streets of the city - ''whose inhabitants are to be congratulated upon their generosity in affording educational facilities'' - blow acrid smoke from a villainous cutty over giggling miss and more dignified Mrs, and, in the role of a copper-coloured Orgy-Porgy, show an amatory zeal in kissing the girls and making them laugh! But the University anthem in bombastic Latin, supplies the cue to a thorough understanding in its frequent burden - itself a delicious example of the sententious pomposity dear to the undergraduate - ''after joyous youth comes carking old age, and then the grave! So let us rejoice while we are young.''
The details of the nonsensical pageant are unimportant, and do not remain in the memory.
There is left but a post-impression of blaring instruments, cries and cat-calls, dabs of moving colour in a sea of grinning faces, an occasional shrewd political or municipal hit contained in a brief sentence on some moving placard, which impinged itself on the intellect by reason of its sharp appositeness - and general hilarity, jocularity, and reckless merriment.
The absurdity of the twinkling little legs of the burlesque Highlander in the band remains in the memory, as does also the recollection of the sturdy six-foot baby in pinafores who did credit to the Karitane Institute; and it is at things such as these that one laughs when the students have passed, and one has returned to one's neglected ledger or yard measure.
• Whoever were responsible for serious injury to a well-known Dunedin gentleman deserve to be severely punished.
This gentleman was walking down Pitt street, his hands in his pockets, when he tripped over a rope which had been stretched across the road by someone with a distorted sense of what constitutes a practical joke.
He was so badly knocked about that he has been confined to his bed since. - ODT, 12.6.1914
