Princeton HHH Hash No. 310.4

Date:  May 5, 1991
Weather:  Elysian
Set by:  The Geezer
Runners:  LRF, Chris, Cam & Ed
"First to Cooler"  Joe Burns
The Dead-Head*
or
ETS and Beyond the Infinite

	It was during the more pleasant weather, that in due rotation with the other hares, the Geezer 
came round to set.  Rather than provide us with useful lore, he deposited us on the grounds of ETS 
with exhortations to watch the flowers, the deer, the robins, and "Mother Goose", and in general to 
cavort about and commune with Nature on "arguably the most beautiful day in Princeton in the last 
decade."  On this idyllic afternoon, we once again splashed back and forth across Stony Brook all 
the way to Rosedale Park, but . . .
	Let me make a clean breast of it here, and frankly admit that we kept but a sorry watch for the 
trail.  With the universe revolving about us on such a day, how could we but lightly hold our 
obligations to observe all hashers' standing orders, "Keep your weather eye open, and sing out 'On! 
On!' every time."  Indeed, with only the LRF and a handful of wide-eyed undergraduates, fortunate 
were we to reach shelter before the fall of night, and to relate the dimly-remembered details of our 
wanderings would serve no purpose.
	Instead, let me in this place movingly admonish you, ye harriers of Princeton!  Beware of 
enlisting in your troop too many youths with lean brows and hollow eyes, given to unseasonable 
meditativeness.  Beware of such as these, I say:  your trails must be seen before they can be 
trodden; and these sunken-eyed young philosophers will tow you ten times round the world, and 
never make you one pint of ale the richer.  For nowadays the hash furnishes an asylum for the 
romantic, the melancholy, and the absent-minded, disgusted with the cares of earth, and seeking 
sentiment in lime and flour.
	Very often the Grand Masters of such hashes take those absent-minded dawdlers to task, 
upbraiding them with not feeling sufficient "interest" in the trail; half-hinting that they are so 
hopelessly lost to all honorable ambition, as that in their secret souls they would rather not see 
marks than otherwise.  But all in vain; those young Platonists have a notion that their vision is 
imperfect; they are short-sighted; what use, then, to strain the visual nerve?  They have left their 
opera glasses at home.
	"Why, thou monkey," said a veteran to one of these lads, "we've been running now hard upon 
three hours, and thou hast not spotted a mark yet.  Marks are as scarce as hen's teeth whenever thou 
art in the lead."  Perhaps they were; or perhaps there might have been shoals of lime on the far 
horizon; but lulled into such an opium-like listlessness of vacant, unconscious reverie is this 
absent-minded youth by the blending cadence of the run with his thoughts, that at last he loses his 
identity; takes the gently flowing brook at his feet as the visible image of his wandering soul, 
pervading mankind and nature; and every half-seen, gliding, beautiful thing that eludes him, every 
dimly-discovered flower or some undiscernible form, seems to him the embodiment of those 
elusive thoughts that only people the soul by continually flitting through it.  In this enchanted 
mood, thy spirit ebbs away to whence it came; becomes diffused through time and space; forming 
at last a part of every wood and glade the round globe over.
	But while this dream is on ye, let your foot slip an inch on some shining rock, or your hand 
grasp the air in place of a supporting vine, and your identity comes back in horror.  And perhaps, at 
mid-day, in the fairest weather, with one half-throttled shriek you tumble into the slate-bedded 
brook and crack your head, no more to rise for ever.  Heed it well, ye pantheists!

* With apologies to Herman Melville

Next Hashes
Sunday, May 12	2 PM	#311.4	Wacko sets
Sunday, May 19	2 PM	#312.4	Dinos sets
Sunday, May 26	2 PM	#313.4	Dr. No sets
Sunday, June 2	2 PM	#314.4	Solo sets