for years the annual Oxford and Cambridge rivalries have attracted the attention and awakened the interest of thousands of athletic enthusiasts. A nation which has always been noted for its devotion to sport of every kind seems able to keep a friendly atmosphere around its keen athletic rivalries. Much is said about "true sportsmen" who try their best and then accept defeat gracefully when the other side triumphs, without an aftermath of suspicion, petty charges, and narrow animosities. But such sportsmen appear foreign to the American college environment.

It may be that there are inherent differences of character which make impossible for the American what the Englishman recognizes as proper. But no American is willing to admit that he is inferior in good common sense and appreciation of what is right.

probably required the most patient and careful thought. There was no possibility of raising the standard for admittance so long as the secondary school refused to respond, and the college has had to prompt and urge. Even to this day does the good work go on. In the beginning there were preparatory schools in most of the colleges, but it was soon realized that it was a waste of effort to do work that might be done as well at home. Miss Hazard was the first woman to be the head of a woman's college. There were seminaries before headed by women, but she was the first bona fide woman college president. In the high schools and other preparatory schools the girls who expect to attend college begin to make preparations at least four years before the time. The high school course is chosen with that end in view and each year the requirements are a little harder. The college girl, even as a high school girl, is a hard worker; in fact, she probaly works harder getting ready for the entrance examination than she does after she is admitted. There is much criticism of the hard work these

up all forms of athletic rivalry among colleges until the normal and proper conditions can be restored under which contests of varied sort may be held in honest open ways.

The Woman's College Today and Yesterday.

The recent death of Miss Ada Howard, first president of Wellesley, has evoked a wealth of college reminiscences from college women all over the country. Great, indeed, have been the changes since Miss Howard was president of Wellesley and wide are the differences between her regime and that of Miss Hazard of the present day. The fact is emphasized, however, that the country is still young as an educational influence, especially in the matter of the education of women, as college women are minded that Miss Howard, the pioneer, still lived when Miss Hazard took up the work. The college for women has made a great advance, even greater than have men's colleges, and yet in both cases the education of the secondary school has

re

survival of the fittest that attains to college in these days of requirements. Not all the high school girls, by a large majority, could possibly work up to it. Those who are so constituted-physically and intellectually-that they can, represent a high type that the college of today makes into even a better type of

womanhood.

A New Religion.

Professor Schmidt of Cornell University says there is going to be a new religion: "It will recognize the sovereignty of ethics. It will be vital, touching life on every side, growing with the growth of man's mastery over nature, the perfecting of his social relations, the expansion of his knowledge, the increasing delicacy and power of his artistic sense, and the deepening consciousness of the mystery of religion."

An exchange remarks that every clergyman who reads this will be confiIdent that it refers to "our denomination."

STUDENT METHODS.

It is remarkable to note the ingenuity —not to mention the trouble and care -which is brought into play occasionally by students in an endeeavor to get out of doing work which is put into the course solely for their good and which is required of all men alike. This condition of affairs is not confined entirely to the lazy students, where one might be expected to look for it, but, strange to say, it is usually among the brighter and more clever men that such schemes for "beating a prof" originate. It is a curious streak in human nature that a man will go to infinitely more labor in concocting a scheme to get out of a piece of work, than it would take him to do the job were his efforts directed legitimately

to that end.

A student publication from a leading technical school gives an example which illustrates in remarkable fashion the ingenuity displayed in a case of this kind. As every student in general chemistry

has a definite number of unknown so

lutions to analyse for qualitative analysis, this course naturally yields numerous examples of student methods. To facilitate the filling of so many "unknowns" the instructor in charge has his solutions arranged on shelves in large bottles and from each bottle comes a glass siphontube operated by a pinch-cock. When unknowns are filled, the elements they contain are recorded in cipher by the instructor. A man, on completing an analysis, hands in his book to be checked and, if he be obliged to repeat it, receives a new lot of the same solution. Too of ten is this the case and "thereby hangs the tale." One man sees that the instructor is kept busy by plying him with questions while the other fellow goes into his private room and, with a small rubber ball previously prepared with a small hole to fit over the ends of the siphon-tubes, he draws out a drop of each solution, at the same time letting a bubble of air into the end of the tube below the pinch-cock.

The rest is clear. He goes in a hurry to the instructor, saying that if he can have some more solution right away, he will be able to finish up his unknown that afternoon. The unsuspecting professor fills the solution and the studentneedless to say "Freshman," for who else could devise such a plot?-goes in and takes note of all the tubes from which the tell-tale bubbles have escaped and thereupon records them in his note-book and straightway gets his unknown (?) checked up.

This is but one illustration of many which might be given, but it shows in a striking manner the methods employed by some men, and the extent to which they will go to get the answer to a problem without going through its solution. The professor does not care personally how much a man "cribs." He does not get paid any less if a man "spikes" a problem. It is only that he has been there himself and realizes what this means to a man in after years when he has no answers in his book and no siphon-tube to plug.

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THE STATE UNIVERSITY AND PUBLIC
SCHOOL.

It is error to hold that money expended upon a state university is withdrawn from the common schools. The error is twofold. It assumes in the first place that money appropriated for the university would otherwise have been given to the schools. This is far from the fact. In the second place it is error to assume that money spent upon the university does not promote the welfare of the common schools. It does so both directly and indirectly.

Directly, a university supplies the schools with teachers who are competent for their work, who have a broad outlook upon knowledge and can wisely. counsel the young about their courses of study and choice of a calling. One of the worst of all mistakes in educational policy is to assume that a teacher

need know only the bare skeleton of facts which is set for scholars to master in daily routine. The teacher's mind must be an inexhaustible fountain of living knowledge whence the skeleton is clad with form and beauty. One of the potent reasons why our primary education is so barren compared with that of Germany is the scant preparation of many of our teachers.

Indirectly, a great state university benefits the common schools by setting a mark for the ambition of the scholars. It supplies a goal for the first flight of their ambition. It fills the community with minds fertilized by higher cultivation. The graduates return to their homes knowing what science is, furnished with ideals of what a school ought to aim at and with standards by which to judge the quality of its work. The best common schools in the country are in those states which support their universities most liberally. And in communities where college graduates are most numerous the schools are better than anywhere else.

It is therefore hopeless to think of helping the common schools by clipping the wings of the state university. A man might as well think of becoming eminent intellectually by feeding his muscles and starving his brain. The educational body is a unity. Every part must be adequately nourished or the whole will be stunted. Those who reason as if the university were not a part of the common school system reason falsely. It is an essential part without which the schools would lose their principle of growth and degenerate to sheer automatons propelled through a sterile. routine by a dead mechanism.

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TO OPEN NOVEL COLLEGE.

The Home College, Chicago's unique contribution to the educational and philanthropic world, will be opened on June 4th. This institution is to be both a college and a home for retired professional and business men and women who are 60 years of age or older. It is not an old people's home, or a charitable institution, but the residents will be students who purchase places just as they would in any

RESEARCH FELLOWSHIPS IN ENGINEERING

AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS.

The University of Illinois has recently increased the opportunities for graduate work in engineering by the establishment of ten research fellowships in its engineering experiment station. These fellowships, of an annual value of $500, are open to graduates of approved universities and technical schools, both American and foreign, with the preference given to men who have also had some experience in practical engineering. The fellowships must be accepted for two successive years, at the end of which, if all conditions are fulfilled, the master's degree will be conferred.

The experiment station, which was established in 1903, is exceptionally well equipped with the most modern apparatus. It has been liberally supported, as the State Legislature has appropriated, for its maintenance and extension, $300,000 in the last four years.

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WHY THE COLLEGE GRADUATE WAS NOT A SUCCESS.

He became saturated with other men's thoughts.

He depended too much on books. He thought his education was complete when he left colleege.

He regarded his diploma as an insurance policy against failure.

His mind was clogged with theories and impractical facts.

He mistook a stuffed memory for education, knowledge for power and scholarship for mastership.

He knew the language of science, but was ignorant of human nature.

He knew Latin and Greek, but could not make out a bill of goods or bill of sale.

He was well posted in political economy, but could not write a business letter.

His four years in the world of books left him permanently out of joint with the world of practical affairs.

He was above beginning at the foot of the ladder when he left college.

The stamina of the vigorous, independent mind he had brought from the farm was lost in academic refinement.

He thought that his four years' college course had placed him immeasurably above those who had not had that advantage.

He had never assimilated what he had learned, and was crippled by mental dyspepsia.

The habit of discriminating minutely, weighing, balancing and considering all sides of a subject, destroyed his power of prompt decision.

He thought that the world would be at his feet when he left college and made no effort to win its favor.

He could not digest his knowledge.

He knew enough, but could not manage it effectively-could not transmute his knowledge into practical power.Success Magazine.

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PRIZES GIVEN FOR ESSAYS.

For the fourth year the committee of economists headed by Professor J. Laurence Laughlin of the University of Chicago, offers in behalf of Messrs. Hart, Schaffner & Marx a series of four prizes for the best study on any one of twelve subjects given by the committee. The prizes are given in two classes, A and B.

Class A is composed exclusively of all persons who have received the bachelor's degree from an American college since 1896. The prizes are $1,000 and $500 respectively. In Class B, composed of persons who at the time the papers are sent in, are undergraduates in any American college, the prizes are $300 and $150. Prizes of Class A may be awarded to essays submitted in Class B if the merit of the papers demand it.

The subjects given out for the coming competition follow:

1. An Examination into the Economic

Causes of Large Fortunes in this Country.

2. The History of One Selected Railway System in the United States.

3. The Untouched Agricultural Resources of North America.

4. Resumption of Specie Payments in 1879.

5. Industrial Combinations and the Financial Collapse of 1903.

6. The Case against Socialism. 7. Causes of the Rise of Prices since 1898.

8. Should Inequalities of Wealth Be Regulated by a Progressive Income. Tax?

9. The Effect of the Industrial Awakening of Asia upon the Economic Development of the West.

10. The Causes of the Recent Rise in the Price of Silver.

II. The Relation of an Elastic Bank Currency to Bank Credits in an Emergency.

12. A Just and Practicable Method of Taxing Railway Property.

The paper should be sent on or before June 1, 1908, to J. Laurence Laughlin, Esq., University of Chicago, Box 145, Faculty Exchange, Chicago, Ill.

* * *

THE USE OF COLLEGE SLANG.

College slang is a mode of expression which is confined almost entirely to college students and to college surroundings. It is usually quite distinct from the ordinary variety of slang, and contains more meaning.

The ordinary college student uses slang because it is easier to say than the more correct form of expression and because it is usually more expressive. Take, for example, the expression, "chem lab." This is much easier and quicker to say than is "chemical laboratory." Then the word "flunk" is much more emphatic than the mild word "failed." Even the very sound of the word "flunk" seems to indicate something dismal and undesirable.

Aside from its emphasis and its ease of utterance, slang has other values. It seems to set college talk apart from other conversation and make it distinctive. This is a distinction that every student

enjoys. It is something which makes college life appear different from ordinary hum-drum existence, a fact which can be looked back to with pleasure.

Thus it seems that the use of college slang is, in some measure, a good thing, even though a few people do object to it. It is convenient; it is very often more emphatic than a more correct mode of expression; and it is a source of pleasure to the user.

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LIBRARY VISITS.

Much interest is being taken by teachers and pupils in the Cambridge public and parochial schools in "library visits." Last year, Clarence Ayer, the public librarian, in co-operation with the school board, instituted a system of visits by which many grammar school pupils in classes, or subdivisions of classes, go periodically to the library. There they are met by the librarian and his assistants, and after a talk, lasting three-quarters of an hour, by Mr. Ayer, on the library resources, its equipment, and the advantages in, and method of, taking out books, the boys are conducted through the library by the librarian, who explains in detail to the pupils the stacks, their arrangement, the classification of books and other appointments. The girls in each visiting class are similarly instructed by one of the library assistants. In each case, the lecture, together with the tour of inspection, occupies about an hour and a half. The use of the card catalogue and of Poole's index is explained with care, and while most of the visiting scholars are not unfamiliar with the catalogue, they always get some new and useful information. All of the pupils seem interested and many of them take notes. It is the plan of those in charge of these visits to limit each section to forty scholars, and occupying therefore about four afternoons in each week, this library instruction covers a period of nearly six weeks a year.

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WOMAN'S BUILDING AT WISCONSIN.

Because it is impossible to give its 800 young women students adequate physical

training in the present gymnasium, which can accommodate conveniently but 150, it is proposed to erect a woman's building at the University of Wisconsin. At present about 350 of the university girls are crowded into large classes in the little gymnasium in Chadbourne Hall with its fourteen dressing-rooms and fifteen shower baths. All of these 350 freshmen and sophomores are required to take physical training, and their classes occupy so much of the available time that only twenty of the 400 junior and senior girls are doing gynmasium work at present. In view of these conditions a wom

an's building with adequate gymnasium facilities is regarded as one of the imperative needs of the State University. The proposed woman's building will be built on University avenue immediately west of Chadbourne Hall, and with the latter building will form a part of the proposed woman's quadrangle. The new structure is to afford modern and completely equipped gymnasium for women together with rooms and halls for social functions of every character. The great gymnasium will occupy the main floor, with sufficient dressing-rooms, lockers and shower baths for all. A running track and swimming tank will afford additional opportunity for physical training.

Among the other features of the building will be an auditorium for lectures, musical entertainments, and other larger functions; rest rooms, lunch room, society halls for the literary and musical organizations, reading and and writingrooms, and a kitchen with necessary accessories. The lunch room with the ad

joining kitchen will make it possible for young women who are unable to return to their boarding places during the noon hour to secure a warm lunch in pleasant surroundings. The officers of the adviser of women, the director of the gymnasium, and the professor and instructors of physical training for women will also be located here. In order to construct this proposed woman's building, and to build the first of the desired dormitories for men, an appropriation of $100,000 annually for four years is provided for by the bill recently introduced into the Legislature.