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was the mere expression of her own mind, and her sister, on going through her portfolio after her death, found not one poem bearing any evidence of having been produced with the thought of publication.

Writing in this way she entirely lost whatever advantage lies in public criticism and the more or less enforced conformity to accepted rules and ways, but there was gained a certain unrestrained freedom, an unconventional utterance of daring thought that causes us to praise the intrinsic beauty of her work, and overlook what it may lack of extrinsic beauty. This is the judgment of George William Curtis and Mr. Lowell. They see the vivid descriptive and imaginative power, the flashes of original and profound insight into nature and life, and they regret with us the sudden failing of the lyric strains that came upon us so unexpectedly. And this they do without remark on the rugged and even whimsical framework in which the work is set. "When a thought takes one's breath away, a lesson on grammar is an impertinence." Perhaps Miss Dickinson had some such thought in her mind when she

wrote:

The Pedigree of honey
Does not concern the bee;
A clover, anytime, to him
Is aristocracy.

This quatrain is quite indicative of her quick perception and close observation when abroad. She noticed as much as did Thoreau with this difference, that Thoreau could never have expressed himself with the same felicity. Could Thoreau, for instance, have written of the grass like this:

And stir all day to pretty tunes

The breezes fetch along,

And hold the sunshine in its lap.

And bow to everything:

And thread the dews all night, like pearls,

And make itself so fine;

And even when it dies, to pass

To odors so divine;

And then to dwell in sov'reign barns,

And dream the days away;-—

Or could Thoreau have painted the sunset as it glows for us here upon the canvass of this obscure New England poetess:

There seemed a purple stile

Which little yellow boys and girls

Were climbing all the while,

Till when they reached the other side

A Dominie in gray

Put gently up the evening bars,

And led the flock away.

Surely such sight as this is all too rare among our lesser poets. There is one more poem that demands notice. It has not inaptly been compared to Dr. Smith's "Ode to the Flowers," quoted in full by Longfellow in his Outre Mer. It is perhaps the loveliest bit in the portfolio, and surely a most characteristic utterance of one to whom "the coming of the first robin was a jubilee beyond crowning of monarch or birthday of pope; the first red leaf hurrying through the altered air' an epoch." She has called it

A SERVICE OF SONG.

Some keep the Sabbath going to church :

I keep it staying at home

With a bobolink for a chorister,

And an orchard for a dome.

Some keep the Sabbath in surplice :

I just wear my wings,

And instead of tolling the bell for church,

Our little sexton sings.

God preaches-a noted clergyman—

And the sermon is never long;

So instead of getting to heaven at last,

I'm going all along.

Warwick James Price.

NOTABILIA.

A VAST amount of labor, time and patience has been exhausted over the workings and merits of the undergraduate rule. This measure was the result of an attempt to purify college athletics from the taint of professionalism, which had its origin in the inducing of prominent athletes to change their college attachments for a consideration, generally financial. The coaches, captains and advisers of all the Universities unite in denouncing this practice which is said to have prevailed in certain quarters. No end of gray matter has been wasted in composing rules with a bristling verbal parapet at every angle where the wily athlete might seek entrance-he who seeks college to exercise his muscles rather than his brains.

While this laudable work is going on, more than a score of Yale foot ball players, some of them recently graduated, others alumni of longer standing, are receiving generous cash salaries for imparting to other colleges the knowledge of foot ball which they learned at Yale. These coaches, by receiving money, bar themselves from competing in any sort of an amateur contest. This ought to show that this business does not help to keep up the amateur tone of college athletics. These old players who are receiving from fifty to one hundred dollars each week, got what they are selling on the Yale Field. They were taught by men who gave much valuable time and effort in the attempt to teach, out of love for old Yale, the system of foot ball played by our eleven with so much success. They were taught foot ball, not as a means of making a livelihood, but that they might champion the college honor in a pure and lofty spirit of rivalry.

There is not a college team worth mentioning in the country, excepting Harvard and Princeton, that has not secured or tried to secure a Yale coach this season. Why are Yale foot ball players in such demand? It is because there is at Yale a certain way of training and teaching

teams and of developing material, that is found nowhere else. The "Yale system" has become a by-word. Other college teams wish to secure for themselves this winning system, and therefore they want Yale men. Expert foot ball players from Harvard or Princeton could teach the general principles of foot ball as well as a Yale man, and they would do just as much to raise the standard of the game. But an inferior Yale coach is preferred, simply because it is hoped that he can sell for a good price the secret of Yale's success on the foot ball field. This season Yale men are drawing hundreds of dollars monthly who never played on the University eleven, or were even more than indifferent members of the second eleven.

The captain of the Yale team finds it impossible to get coaches to come to New Haven this fall to handle the eleven. So many old players are drawing princely salaries at other institutions that they cannot afford to coach at Yale out of sentiment. Perhaps some day, not far off, the Yale management must each fall outbid the other colleges of the land to secure the services of coaches at all.

Going forth over the the land in a missionary spirit to teach foot ball and raise the standard of the game, is commendable on the face of it. But Yale has the same private right to her foot ball methods as she has to the Cook stroke in rowing. Both were honestly evolved by and for Yale, and came not by chance. It is not superiority of material on the foot ball field that makes the dark blue so formidable. This is a fatal delusion. More than one eastern college team which is receiving Yale coaching, may any season chance to have an unusually fine lot of players, who with proper training may happen to whip our own eleven, and perhaps never be able to repeat the performance. This, however, is not so high a consideration as the question of Yale loyalty and spirit of amateurism.

It seems to the LIT. that Yale is furnishing the chronic objectors to college athletics with a handle on which to hang their arguments, to the effect that anything but learning is the chief acquirement of a college education.

It would be the worst injustice to charge old Yale athletes with intentional disloyalty to their Alma Mater. One great secret of our magnificent record is the self-sacrificing spirit and affection shown for the college by those who have gone from it. And loyal among the loyalists have always been the athletic men. But we think that the foot ball coaching rage has grave objections-which have been set forth from an objector's point of view. It is certain that the graduates in question believe that what they do is right-or else they would not be where they Still the objections outlined here are made, and not infrequently, on and outside of the campus. Our purpose in raising this question is to bring out further expressions of opinion, for and against. The pages of the LIT. are always gladly given to any sort of discussion that concerns Yale in any way or degree.

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The University during the past summer was bereaved of one of its most useful and honored teachers, Professor Edward T. McLaughlin, whose death the Memorabilia records.

Professor McLaughlin was born at Sharon, Connecticut, in May, 1860. He was the son of the Reverend D. D. T. McLaughlin, of the class of 1834, of Litchfield, Connecticut. He was fitted for college at home by his father, and entered Yale in the class of 1883. At college he was distinguished in literary work, winning the LIT. medal in his freshman year, being one of the leading contributors to the LIT. and chairman of its board of editors, and winning the DeForest Oration prize at graduation. After a year of graduate study here he was appointed tutor in English in the college. In 1890 he was made assistant professor in English, and in June, 1893, he was appointed to the new chair of Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres, which it was denied him to actively hold.

His funeral was held at his home in New Haven, on July 27th. He lies buried at Litchfield.

His time of teaching in the University was short, but it was very fruitful, for he was by nature eminently well

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