The physician in performing his duty informs the wet nurse for her protection. She in turn informs the wife. It seems for a time that a divorce will take place. The specialist finally prevails upon Henriette's father to give up the idea of a divorce. The specialist hopes that Dupont can be cured and gives a scientific discussion on the need of reform. This great plea for the single standard was successful as a play. It presents the problem that is presented by Ibsen's Ghosts. Critics say that Ibsen's play is superior in that it is more artistic.

The modern social dramatist will play a great part in the progress of the next half century. In his realistic presentation of the problem he will bring a sense of conviction that will cause the people to remove some of the evils of society.

How can the social drama get before the people when the producers who control the theatrical world are not inclined to accept it? Here our educational institutions have a splendid opportunity. Colleges and universities are offering strong courses. All extension centers should offer courses in the drama. High schools should emphasize the drama by instruction in the English classes and by the production of at least one good drama each year. Every community should have a players' club or a drama league under competent direction. This club should encourage the reading of the drama and two or three of the best plays should be presented each year. The high school in every community should organize a drama reading circle among adults. In a short time this campaign of education would produce such a demand for the right type of play that the producers would capitulate.

F. M. Alexander.

LEAVES FROM AN UNDERGRADUATE'S DIARY September 18, 19—

M

Y first day as a citizen of the collegiate world! Now that the evening shadows are here and as I am alone with my thoughts it will be well to sort and classify all these impressions that have deluged me. They are much more than impressions: they are jolts.

It seems that I created a college world out of the material of my imagination long before my feet were on the campus. I find that mentally I am between two worlds: the one which was created from the materials of imagination; the other of the concrete things of a very real reality. Strange-these two worlds have nothing in common.

One impression must needs be recorded. It is of that fifty odd miles of desolation that spreads itself out between here and Richmond. Passing through and musing on it as one will muse on trains, I named this wild stretch of land "The Country that God Forgot." A rather harsh nomenclature, yet the only one that seems to give an adequate impression of the feelings that must be common to all who, for their first time, steam merrily through its miles of sterile sameness.

I had my first taste of loneliness on that train. It was a wellcrowded train. Just in front of me was a small group of verymuch-in-evidence students of the upper-classmen variety. They were enjoying a very intimate companionship made sweet by a summer's separation. They were of a type which jarred a wee bit on my conception of mentally and imagination-created collegians. Primarily they were not intellectuals. Neither their faces nor their conduct betrayed any of those traits which by instinct one associates with the student type; just young active animals with an exuberant holiday spirit about them. Despite this there was a subtle air of cultivated superiority about them. I have

been so much in that air to-day that I have mental mal-de-mer— such air is quite upsetting mentally.

While no brass band heralded my approach, yet there was a veritable sea of scrutinizing, intensive looks leveled with astonishing precision as I descended from the train. I had the keen and not altogether pleasant realization of just how embarrassing some sixty pair of clear young eyes could be. I would have given much to have been given some Gyges mirror whereby I could have looked behind those eyes to the reaction that my cindercovered face set up. They made me feel as if I had forgotten to wear a tie, or as if my trousers were in jeopardy.

On analysis the whole day seems to have been a series of embarrassing situations. My first meal was an ordeal. To one who has been accustomed to eating within the privacy of a home circle the quick transition to a mob of hungry animals, all more than anxious to devour everything in sight, is a jolt that is not passed over lightly.

There has been a whole series of lesser jolts. A session with a dean who with a few words of biting academic criticism of my beloved prep. school nearly jolted my temper loose. A visit to the college treasurer was also a jolt of another kind. The kind that shook loose all my money. All these took place before noon.

After lunch I made my call on the president. I went with a mind prepared for a jolt. I was like a man who stands before the deep pool of cold water ready to take a plunge, shivers, musters up a maximum of courage and makes the plunge to find the water not cold, but delightfully warm. Such was my experience with the president, and the reaction was such a delightful surprise and so unexpected that I was completely embarrassed.

There is one very subtle bit of satisfaction that comes to me as I sit here in this desolate room writing these words. I am not alone to-night. Over a vast expanse of this America of ours are perhaps thousands sorting the mixed impressions of a first day at college.

sea.

I salute you, my fellow adventurers, on the great collegiate If you have found its waters as cool as I have, you will have found them as invigorating. Wherever you may be tonight, the University of Maine, of Michigan, Columbia, Yale, Tulane, anywhere, whoever you may be, I reach out invisible hands to you; for we are all one to-night at the end of the first day of the great adventure.

September 21st.

William James somewhere describes the world that presents itself to the infant as a “big buzzing confusion." I am as an infant born into a new world; it certainly buzzes and is outwarding confusion confounded.

The process of discarding my college of ideality still continues, rather slowly but quite effectually. I am quietly substituting for my college creation of dream mists and cobwebbed ideals a something which, while I do not understand, yet I know it is of the materials of a drab reality.

To-night I have not the slightest idea of what the function of a college is. The time was when I had a sure confidence that I knew with a scientific precision of definition. To-night I am confident of little. Perhaps if faced with the task of defining a college man, the definition which I would hazard would be that he is a sort of specialized grown-up baby with a marked predilection to reversion to the undeveloped condition.

I am slowly learning the mysteries of college spirit. dimly aware of the attitude of the college mind, considering the college mind in the collective sense. It is a Janus-like thing, this attitude. Outwardly it assumes a position the exact opposite of what one would think it to be. What it is inwardly that sovereign alchemist, Time, has yet to reveal to me.

When I started for here my driving impulse was to know books. I fear that I shall know very little about books. It does seem that I shall know much about those things that are not in books.

There is a curious process going on among us Freshmen. We are making friends on a conscious trial basis. All of us are quite engaged in making friends of the trial and error plan. We all seem to know by some unvarying instinct that many of our present friendships can not last. The process of making friends is such a delicate one that I went over to the library this afternoon and read Emerson's Essay on Friendship. Some of those wonderful lines still echo through my mind. For a cold philosopher Emerson does have some surprising outbursts of very human warmth.

This brings me to an interesting bit of introspection. Are any of these men about me destined to be great souls? Will any of these buoyant, care-free personalities sway the destinies of our Nation? Will some of these hands which now move on such trivialities be the instruments that will pen words that will live from generation to generation? These are certainly possibilities. I must know all these men as intimately as possible, then I will not lose any chance of knowing a great spirit in embryo.

Now that I have been going to classes for several days, I have made at least one interesting discovery. It is that college professors are quite human and that they are not mere storehouses of academic learning. I no longer think of a professor as a storehouse of knowledge but rather as a dynamo of knowledge and a mainspring of thinking.

Phillips Brooks wrote after his first week in Virginia that if one intended to stay here any length of time it would be wise to leave one's intellect behind. This statement of Phillips Brooks has always puzzled me. It seemed harsh, quite too harsh for so gentle a soul. This last week I have found the feeling that prompted it. I feel the same way; why I do not know.

It seems to be a part of Freshmen scheme of things not to think. It appears to be almost a mania, an obsession with all of us to avoid the process as something dangerous and pernicious.

Life seems to be a travesty on itself, a huge joke. Men come from every direction to college with the avowed intention of