thinker, as the highest type of a wise man, Omar deliberately chose to openly celebrate the uselessness of temperance, and the pleasures of wine. "Drink! for you know not whence you come, nor why. is the philosophy, if not of his life, at any rate of his poems. He was the outspoken prophet of to-day, of present enjoyment; thrown into greater relief by the mysticism and symbolism of his contemporaries. An astronomer of great repute, his scientific studies may have influenced him in developing his uncompromising materialism. However that may be, his life, as far as we know, was that of a student and sage, and not that of a drunken carouser, as we should be led to suppose from the tenor of his poems. In them we see but inexorable fatalism, more deadly even than the ordinary predestination of Islam; an eyeless fatalism, a fortuitous law from which there is no escape. Life, at best, was to him but a succession of sensual pleasures, stolen from under the very jaws of unrelenting Destiny. "The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, H. L. E. MEMORABILIA YALENSIA. Foot Ball Captain For 1893 is F. A. Hinkey, '95. Captain of the Crew For 1894 is F. A. Johnson, '94 S. Captain of the Base Ball Team For 1894 is G. B. Case, '94. Captain of the Athletic Team For 1894 is D. B. Lyman, '94. The Championship Ball Games For 1893 resulted as follows: Harvard 7, Princeton o. Harvard 9, Princeton 8. Yale 5, Princeton 1. Yale 2, Princeton o. Yale 14, Princeton 7. Harvard 3, Yale 2. Harvard o, Yale 3. Harvard 6, Yale 4. YALE. Stroke. E. F. Gallaudet, '93 The Yale-Harvard Race Took place at New London, June 30, 1893. Time, Yale 24.59, Harvard 25.17. The crews were as follows: The Triangular Race On June 28, was won by Yale, '96. Time, Yale 10.23; Har vard 10.49; Columbia 11.02. The crews were: HARVARD, '96. Bow. F. M. Forbes. '95 S. 2. G. S. Derby. The Winner of the DeForest Prize Was Winthrop Edwards Dwight, '93. The Winner of the John A. Porter Prize Was Julian Ingersoll Chamberlain, '95. The Intercollegiate Tennis Tournament, On the grounds of the New Haven Lawn Club, was won by Brown University in both singles and doubles. The finals were played Friday, October 6, as follows: Chase and Budlong, of Brown, defeated Foote and Howland of Yale, 6-1, 6-3, 2-6, 4-6, 6-4. Malcome Chace, of Brown, beat A. E. Foote, Yale, 6-2, 6-1, 6-3. The First Foot Ball Game Of the season was played October 4 with Brown, resulting in a victory for Yale by a score of 18 to 0. Professor Edward Tompkins McLaughlin died in New Haven, July 25, of typhoid fever. Dr. W. Irving Hunt, formerly tutor of Greek in Yale College, died in Columbus, Mich., August 25, of consumption. BOOK NOTICES. The author of A Japanese Interior* had an advantage over most of the travelers and foreign residents who have written of Japan, in having been peculiarly intimately associated with the Japanese as they are among themselves, untouched by foreign influence. She was a teacher in the school for noble girls managed by the Imperial Household, one of the most anti-foreign of the Japanese schools, and she lived in a real Japanese home, where there was no other foreigner, and all her surroundings were Japanese. And she has used well her advantage in giving us an entertaining glimpse of Japanese life from a standpoint new to most readers. The book is a series of letters extending over the year of the author's teaching in Japan-letters not written for publication, and from their natural, familiar, conversational tone all the more pleasant, and containing simply an account of the author's most interesting experiences and observations, presented without many reflections upon them, and needing none, for, on account of her peculiar experience, they are interesting enough to stand alone. Japan has been of recent years afflicted with a host of travelers who have stayed a few weeks or months there, and have then written books consisting of superficial observations of the most obvious external features of the life of the people, and imperfect generalizations therefrom. This book, the result of the combination of the author's peculiar opportunities and her keen and sympathetic observations, is a welcome change. It is not for her accounts of traveling under difficulties, or of public festivals and processions, or of shops or theatres, entertaining as these all are, that Miss Bacon's book is most valuable, for many travelers can tell us those things. But she lets us into the very life of the Japanese home, and into the thoughts and feelings of all in the household, from servant to mistress. She describes minutely and vividly their manner of living, their social etiquette, their weddings, their funerals, their little domestic merrymakings, their housekeeping, their meals, all the ways and affairs of the household. Few travelers can tell as she does, for example, of the vestibule of a Japanese house: "At this place bows and saio naras were exchanged on the part of all in the house whenever one member of the family went away on so much as a shopping expedition; here, too, sounded the cheerful "O kaeri" that announced the return of one of the occupants of the house, the breathless "O kyaku" shouted by the kurumaya of the coming guest so soon as he was within the gate, or the supplicating "go men nasai" with which the applicant for admission made known his presence." And in her description of her school she exhibits a similar intimate knowledge with people of a different class, telling us of the little Japanese peeresses not as the casual visitor tells, who sees only the interesting outside, but showing us the far more interesting inside, the real natures and minds of her scholars. Further, on account of her position as a teacher to the daughters of the noble families, she was present * A Japanese Interior. By Alice Mabel Bacon. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. |