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THE YALE OF HERE AND THERE.

VERY one of us has often said that "college-life" is the greatest thing in a University training. We thought this out in prep. school, were sure of it before we had been here three weeks, have discussed it over and over again and always with the same conclusion until it has become so trite to us that I hesitate to mention it here. But to be logical,— and it's indispensable to a LIT. leader-one must begin at the beginning. Any one you ask would define this collegelife as "rubbing up against all sorts of fellows and learning to get on with any one"; savoir-faire is another thing that it teaches. We have learned, then, to cherish this grouping force, with all its traditions and fellowships, and to despise educational institutions which lack it. Here was the beginning of our much-discussed democracy (the integrity of which cannot be threatened without a protest from every Yale man); for both college-life and democracy depend upon the fact of all persons concerned having something real in common.

The Wanderlust in a moderate degree is a good thing; he who has never traveled is essentially narrow. But it is

obviously a bad thing for college men in term-time.

I am

not referring here to cuts and marks,—for a man may do a considerable amount of traveling without hazard to his Degree, if he uses discretion; but it obviously puts him out of touch with his fellows and diminishes the number of things in common; in a word, it diminishes democracy. In the old days of stage-coach and sailing packet, consule Jehu (to coin a term), life was much more centralized and the democracy much keener. It was too narrow a life to be looked back upon with regret, for traveling in its due season -an invaluable educator-was impossible, but it serves well as illustration. Old Grads. often complain that the present undergraduate feels he ought to spend his two weeks in the South each winter and go to many house-parties and festivities all over the Eastern Coast, things which the aforesaid Graduates never dreamt of and consider as pernicious luxury. The Yale of to-day seems to them what the texts of some sermons seem to the listener, a point of departure. They groan over a dwindling democracy, and add with a frown, "The young fools, they're getting the best and still must go out and hunt for something else. They don't realize that what is most worth while for them is not at Palm Beach, nor yet at Atlantic City, nor yet in New York, but in New Haven."

There is a great deal of reason in our Graduate friends' grumblings, and we cannot but admit that their point is well taken. New York, we notice, is one of the points they mention where Yale is not. And yet a careful investigation proves that it is in the purchase of round-trip tickets to New York that this excessive Wanderlust shows itself more than in any other direction. This manifestation is as natural and right as the Wanderlust itself, when kept in reasonable bounds; but one must be very conservative and very uncompromising to define those reasonable bounds aright.

Universities and colleges in large cities are proverbially lacking in college-life. City standards and city dispersion play havoc with it; vide the troubles which Harvard, Co

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Yale University

Library JAN 5 '40

Feb. 1905]

The Yale of Here and There.

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lumbia and Pennsylvania have gone through. We have been no neighbor to New York in times gone by; but we are getting nearer and nearer every year. As the inconveniences of travel grow less (and the best interests of the University can thank the railroad that keeps them as great as they are), the excuses for the trip grow more trivial; a bit of music, a show, a call is pretext enough now-a-days. They are pleasant and perchance cultivating, but the principle is bad, all bad, bad and selfish. It is a sacrifice of many for few.

The college activities, taken as they come, are good; the college world offers us every avenue to culture or whatever we may call the object for which we have come here. And we have come here and not there. But, after all, it is to larger welfare than that of the individual that we must look. The argument that a man may do his part in college activity completely and well in half of the time and indulge his wanderlust in the rest, covers this but begs a larger question. The segregation of individuals from the group, whether for a college year in the Hutch., or for shorter periods at a greater distance, is indisputably a detriment to the group.

That city standards are not wholesome when applied to college life, we have already broadly asserted. Social distinctions always exist in cities, and, above all, in a great social centre like New York; and pre-arranged social distinctions should never exist in the college world. Our approach nearer and nearer town (I say town rather than New York, that it may be understood that this leader bears no animus against that great and glorious city as such) brings town standards more clearly before us, and a tendency to adopt them whole, points-of-view both real and distorted, prejudices and ready-made distinctions, follows. "But what has an introduction of new standards got to do with an occasional trip out of town, which is the theme of your discussion," you interrupt. It applies in this, that wanderlust means restlessness and the getting-out-of-touch breeds

dissatisfaction with college standards and a desire for others which wrongly seem more real.

A recent popular novel tells of a clergyman who preaches a long and bitter sermon; then after all is over and the comments are beginning to volley to and fro, a cowboy remarks placidly, "Well, I'm going to stay a Mormon." We fear that this exposé of one of our pet weaknesses will meet with much the same comment: "I'm going to stay a traveler." But if this leader causes any one willy-nilly to think, it has accomplished its purpose. For the remedy in this case lies in the thought and feeling of individuals.

J. L. Houghteling, Jr.