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Jan. 1905]

Memorabilia Yalensia.

157

Class Book Historians-Dilworth Richardson Lupton, Bruce Cartwright, Jr., Robert Gray, Samuel Williamson Nevin, Henry Magraw Rathvon, Irving Tritch Snyder.

Class Day Historians—Joseph Edwin Washington, Jr., George Mather Brown, Detos Marquis Coen, John Gephart Munson, Alexander Robert Lawton, 3d.

Picture Committee-John Elsworth Owsley, Guy Louis Chamberlain, Harry Alen Abbe.

Cup Committee-Raymond Havemeyer, Wilson Begges Hickox, Ernest Cephas Platt.

Statistician Committee-Harold Graham Alexander, Reese Denny Alsop, Joseph Walker Kennedy, Edgar Drewry Lynch, Earle Tappan Stannard.

Hockey Scores

December 28-Yale I, Toronto 2.

29-Yale 2, All-Interscholastic I.

30-Yale 2, Toronto 3.

31-Yale 3, Toronto 7.

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BOOK NOTICES.

Routine and Ideals. By LeBaron Russell Briggs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

In the first place, these papers deserve a very much better name than that of "sermons" that the author gives them. The volume contains half a dozen addresses, one or two to school children, a commencement address at Wellesley College, a defence of Harvard from a Boston newspaper, a Phi Beta Kappa poem, and, best of all, the essay which christens the volume "Routine and Ideals." We have read these stray papers, word by word, from cover to cover. We have gained a new inkling of that which is best in Harvard, that which makes it worth while, and we have come to believe that its Dean Briggs is very nearly a great man.

"Routine and Ideals" is a very convincing and common-sense plea for the things that make its title. The essays all read as easily as a story, so illuminated are they with quotations and incidents. "Harvard and the Individual" is a defence of the university against the small college. The Wellesley address is another admonition to a class of graduating girls, for the things that are worth while. The other papers are, perhaps, as interesting but not so pointed at a college audience. The simplicity and sturdiness which makes up the little volume's atmosphere, and the great range of personal experience which backs it all, have made a very valuable book. It is difficult not to wax extravagant over an unpretentious collection of papers in which extravagance has no place.

In the Name of Liberty. By Owen Johnson. The Century Co. There is, perhaps, something to be gained from the deliberate horror of such a book as this. There is, undoubtedly, a scheme of truth in the bloody melodrama that it stages. If there is a lesson and we find one-it is neither beautiful nor inspiring. Its virtue lies in the very luridness, in the striking force, but most of all in the indisputable humanity of the story.

The author, whose "Arrows of the Almighty" attracted attention a few years ago, has taken the crisis of the French revolution as his scene, and the confused entanglements of its emotions as his theme. The story concerns mainly three per

sons, a flower-girl of a peculiarly frail and graceful mould, an adventurer, as grotesque as he is mysterious, and a young radical, whom the girl loves and dies for. The tragedy is that of her love-though the thread is often lost in the impossible confusion of mob, guillotine and prison. The characters are strikingly and boldly drawn. The main faults of the story lie in the extravagance of its coloring and the kaleidoscopic suddenness of its action. A noteworthy point about the book is that the reader is suddenly convinced in the last chapter that this is not light literature at all.

The Story of St. Paul. By Prof. Benjamin Wisner Bacon. Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

With a spirit of liberality, toned by a kind of firm, healthy Christianity, Professor Bacon sets about in this series of lectures to criticize and interpret the Man of Letters. The contradictions of our extant records, the Acts and the Epistles, he makes no effort to harmonize, but prefers to cull from them an account upon which he can base his deductions. The title of the volume is, to a certain extent, misleading. Whatever may have been the author's purpose, his work is not a story. It is a series of essays, of criticisms and comments in a semipopular style upon the periods of St. Paul's career, and upon the letters. Only occasionally does he illuminate the work with a page or two of narrative.

A serviceable example of his method and attitude occurs in the second lecture, "Conversion and Vocation." The author explains the vision and the striking circumstances to which the missionary's change of heart is attributed-the famous "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?"-into four elements. The first is purely physical, a burning desert sun and its effect upon the fevered traveller. Secondly, there is indicated the existence in Paul's mind of the raw material of Christianity, a knowledge of its doctrines and a disagreement with the spirit of persecution. Third is his dissatisfaction with superficial form, and an earnest internal struggle for ultimate truth; and lastly, the author declares we must recognize the direct intervention of God.

The "Story of St. Paul" has an atmosphere of firm yet modern liberalism that substantiates its criticism more than all else.

J. G. R.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

As I was coming out of Chapel not long ago, the man in front of me turned, and pointing at the McLaughlin tablet on the wall, remarked,— "Funny thing. I've been here three years and a half and never noticed that before to-day."

Now I might go into a long-winded and highly commendable exposition of the evils of undergraduate neglect of the opportunities about them, telling in garnished language that in the heat and fever of the pursuit after things which are of the earth earthy, they entirely miss the influences towards high thoughts and ideals, which lies within elbow touch.

I shall not.

The point of the remark was, to me, the fact that the man had seen the tablet, even though it happened after many days," and I am willing to wager that he will remember it for many more. And this brings me to my

discussion.

If you would try an interesting experiment, turn to your neighbor in the class-room some fine day and ask him [being careful to elude the lecturer's eye] this question: "Tell me what you can about Nathan Hale.”

He may look at you with scorn for your ignorance and proceed to give you an account of the brief career of the patriot-hero. He may point out to you the fact that he graduated from Yale College in the class of 1773, and that he is a man at the mention of whose name every Yale man of to-day should feel a tingling of the spine.

He may do that, but I doubt it.

Rather you shall find that one neighbor in every three is either ignorant of the fact that Yale can boast of such a hero, or if he does know, will possess a very hazy idea [safeguarded by the general information that Nathan Hale was hanged during the Revolution, a fact which enables a fairly intelligent bluff] as regards the class in which he graduated.

And there is a reason.

Go to the Linonian and Brothers Library and you shall find one book on Nathan Hale; to the University Library and an exhaustive collection of four biographies, one play, one poem, and a few brief memoirs is accessible from the index. Look about the campus for a statue, a memorial of the Yale graduate who gave his life and his honor for his country, and you shall look in vain.

There is a reason, but there is a lesson too. If we at Yale have that in us which responds to the call of patriotism and self-sacrifice, of honor and fearlessness, as one Yale man had, more than a hundred years ago, should not his form be "cast in deathless bronze?" Each year are lectures delivered upon the responsibilities and duties of citizenship. Would not such a memorial teach us something concerning patriotism?

We quote the following:

MERLIN.

I am the master of all destinies ;

I gave to this fair realm a noble king.
Saved from the fury of the northern seas,
After a night of tempest in the spring.

I wave my wand, and magic realms appear,
Dim cities where triumphal pageants throng,
Ill-fated queens, Iseult and Guinevere,

And knights, the flower of legendary song.

All is enchantment, but how real it seems!

This cloud-built kingdom with its lordly towers,
The castles, gardens, palaces, and bowers
Are but the glorious phantoms of my dreams,
Dreams fair as rainbow hues with which the mist
Glows when a moment by the sunlight kissed.

-The Stanford Sequoia.

WINTER.

I go, I go,

To the barren plains where the north winds blow,
Where the branches snap in the teeth of the gale

And the breath of the northern foe.

To the empty hills and the frozen trail

And to winds' low wail

I go.

For Nature my Mother is old and chill

And hath sore need of me.

Marvel of marvels, Church of God—
Mother, I come to thee.

I come, I come,

Though the music of hill and plain be dumb,
And the wind forget the rose it bore

In its wailings burdensome.

Though the rose be dust on the temple floor,
Through the shrouded door

I come.

For Nature my Mother is old and chill

And hath sore need of me.

Marvel of marvels, Church of God-
Mother, I come to thee.

-The Harvard Monthly.

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