high-minded rivals to be fought with unequal weapons? Well might Yale Banger exclaim, "Alas for our beloved orations! acquired by skinning, looking-on and ponies."-But we are not all of this class. We may come up here with aims vastly at variance with any yet mentioned, and become honorable men. Our purposes are high, and means equally so; for each individual is a truth-teller, and acknowledges, with content, the fruits of his own unaided scholarship honestly employed. Broad and thorough accomplishments are displayed with all the confidence of honest gain: while meagre culture loses half its disgrace by the accompanying frankness and sincerity. High thoughts are seated in a heart of courage, challenging cheerful admiration; and breast and brain act in sympathy, developing the highest type of the manly Student of Honor. Do not those of us of this last class deserve the distinction of furnishing the first element of College Honor.

Having thus applied one of our tests to the student microcosm, let us take up another, by no means less important. I am sorry we have to be so hard on our own profession; but candor seems to demand it; and furthermore, we all like being cynics at times, and trying our neighbors by our absolute standards. Let us now look into the matter of truthtelling, which surely is indispensable to our ideal. I have just been implying we do not always act the truth: do we, as a body, always speak it? In this respect do Collegians compare well with other professions, and with their beau ideal in their own? For my part, I believe no class of persons are, in general, so truthful as students: circumstances the same, and man against man, I would take a student's word before the world's. The jolly blade, with his drink and gluttony, rarely plumes himself on his falsehoods; and even the wildest of us detest prevarication like the plague. Books, sentiment, and manly intercourse, tend to raise us above this temptation of the vulgar: while a partial seclusion from the world, and a thoughtful life, tend to keep our moral sensibilities unimpaired. Such are the general notions of truth-speaking among students; but mark the strange inconsistency when we apply them to College concerns. It has been one of the chief traits of College reform, for the last century, to shift responsibility from the authorities upon the governed. The principles of honor and love, with which Napoleon swayed armies, and Nelson fleets, were appreciated; and College authorities, like all others, availed themselves of this lesson. The rigid guard of the old regime was greatly relaxed; and spies and proctors began to be only facts of history. It was necessary to find a substitute for them, to prevent the College world from falling into license and anarchy; which was done by eve

rywhere awakening a sense of personal accountableness. Every man became a watch of himself: each one was thrown upon his own honora quality of student character just then discovered-to obey College regulations and confess delinquencies. Arnold advanced this principle in the English schools, which, he said, he governed precisely like a great empire. Honor was the sun of his system, and every boy felt the awful dignity of a planet traversing about, and flinging back its light. This theory found congenial soil in America, the bounties of whose adoption we now share. Have we been fairly equal to the trust: cheerfully received and discharged the responsibility? Have these sentiments of honor and veracity been faithfully applied? Has even our honesty in other affairs been preserved in College matters, or have we screened sloth and pleasure with cheats and deceptions? Every one can respond in the light of his own deeds; but all must admit, that the honor we give in trade and on the play ground, flows less freely in teacher's halls, for reasons which it may be well to consider. Les us pause for a moment to examine them.-The first defense of this system, for such it is, is, that College authorities have no right to compel uniform observance of their rules, and that cheats and lies are the only safe method of evading them; which seems to be rather weak ground. College is a place of optional residence: you can remain in it, or not, as you choose; but, while you do, it demands obedience to its injunctions, and, if they seem oppressive, your redress is in withdrawal, not resistance.-Another ground of defense is, that deceptions-false excuses for instance--though known by the Faculty to be such, are still allowed as unavoidable: that students are expected thus to evade College law. It is difficult to say how far this is the case; but, if at all, it is a mutual understanding of hood-winking and lies, which is detestable. There are many College statutes, which are certainly dead letters, and as no distinction is made between them and others, the student, at matriculation, being obliged to pledgehimself to all alike, there is a shadow of excuse for him who justifies his disregard of any particular rule, by the fact that all cannot be observed, by which fact he is virtually absolved from his promise, and excused from obeying any. A punctilious man would not creep out of such a little hole, but others do, and in large numbers; a fact generally known. While, then, we ask students to reform, we must, likewise, pray for reform in laws; for there will be no real show of honor on our side, unless wisely met upon the other. To onr College Fathers we must appeal, to take from us this temptation. Other excuses there are; but these are the strongest upon which the practisers of 14*

VOL. XXVII.

College fibbing defend themselves. Are they sufficient to account for the depraved state of College truthfulness; or does the evil spring directly from ourselves?

"O, what a tangled web we weave,

When first we practice to deceive!'

Having thus far considered our own motives and truthfulness, let us now notice what degree of charity we use in ascribing motives and veracity to others; which is the third element of College Honor. It may be said, this point can be quickly settled by the fact, that we are apt to measure others by our own standard, whatever it may be, allowing them the same virtue we claim for ourselves. This idea, however, is not fundamental; for there exists the opposing fact, that every man of honor does accredit high aims and purposes to others, and in a more bountiful measure than he, himself, possesses them.— No true man will shut his eyes to the bright side of another's character, to the ray of light in its darkest recesses: nay, he will seek it, charitably and earnestly, knowing that the worthy are often modest, and bury dazzling qualities of heart beneath a repulsive exterior. The soul, conscious in itself of its own proud rectitude, seeks not to parade its glory to the thoughtless crowd, but hugs it closer to itself, soothing and nourishing, so, when the times demand, it bursts forth, like smouldering flames, with pent-up and irresistible might. Thus character, partially observed, may displease, which, fully seen, commands our praise, as the Old Man of the Hills is emotionless in profile, while a front view exhihits a scene painted with the most gorgeous hues of nature. Charity! we of the College world need it, who meet many an honest man with doubt, and crush many an honest aim with scorn. A warm spot may yet exist in the heart of every man, still alive with truth and manliness, glowing with some recollections of home and childhood. How frequently we confess to ourselves our attachment for men, when fully known, whom, in our ignorance, we once despised. This single fact is argument enough for charity.

I have thus spoken of three elements of College Honor, in all of which most of us are wanting. Let us now examine the incentives to their cultivation.

An appreciation of the fact that we are students, ought, of itself, to spur us to honorable action. The great and good of all eras speak to us; we hold sweet commune with all that has ever been proudly virtuous: and all the nobility of genius and learning, by precept and example, exhort us to ingenuous lives. Thus a contradiction is involved in admitting students can be subject to low views; can run any

course but one of honor; for it is the province of culture and knowledge to nourish the growth of vigorous sentiments in the mind, and choke the progress of everything low and unmanly; and he who is unequal to this idea of his duty, has yet to learn the fundamental principles of scholarly success. A severe German conception states, that no man can be an orator who is not first a good man: much less can a person be at the same time a trickster and a student. The masses recognize the fact, always expecting the nobler qualities in scholars, and readily committing their interests, both in religion and government, to the hands of the studious; hence the shock a community experiences, when those of this class betray their confidence, and sink their own culture to miserable ends; human nature nowhere presenting a more hideous deformity, than where high intellectual attainments are joined with perfidy and dishonor. There seems to exist an idea, that head and heart ought to be developed together, which, with us, should occur. College life is a good time to be honorable and noble: one rarely has a better audience, whose opinion will follow him closer, and whose appreciation is greater. We are slow to acknowledge others are actuated by higher purposes than ourselves, but, when once we do, nothing can surpass our admiration.

How many of us shall quote to each other, in after years, the lines Curran once recited to an early friend, a beautiful tribute to early days:

"We spent them not in toys, or lust, or wine;

But search of deep philosophy,

Wit, eloquence, and poesy,

Arts which I loved, for they, my friend, were thine!"

But the greatest incentives to practice honor is, the mere satifaction which attends well-doing; a sentiment as common as sunshine and nearly as useful. The pleasure of duty, honorably done, outstrips all others; nothing equaling a clear conscience and a frank face. It is amusing, however, to see how we sometimes smart under the returns our honor brings upon us-like cowardly martyrs, who recant at a shadow-and to mark our chagrin at the bitter fruits of honesty. We should not expect to be upright, and, at the same time, to share the fortune of the dissembler. He of the College world, who cheats his instructor, may escape, with feathers in his hat, uncaught and unsuspected; while he, who is of the order of honorable men, though less a culprit, it may be, by frankly confessing delinquencies, is made to suffer the penalty of the law. Such is the fact, and we must make up our mind to it; and the student, who owns up his faults with the hope

of leniency or pardon, is really as great a sham as the little boy in Jane Eyre, who preferred psalms to one ginger-snap, and was rewarded with two ginger-snaps for his goodness. I believe oughright lying is better. Rather give us the man who squarely toes the mark of manliness, flinging no cloak of deception over his deeds, and braves the painful consequences; he is the martyr of the College world. Let us hope that the boy, who is somewhere growing up to rule us when men, is shaping his character by just such principles. That alone will make ambition virtue.

Our elements of College honor, then, are high aims and high means in reaching them; truthfulness and charity: our incentives to practice these elements are, a true idea of our duty as students; and the pleasure of honorable action. Do we not owe a recognition of these things to our education and ourselves? If we do owe it, are we not bound, as men, to engraft them into our daily lives? If the path is too narrow for honor and success, or even honor and friendship, should we hesitate which to drop?

As Yalensians, we are all sons of a common mother. A cherished mother she is, too, wrinkled with age and thought; dwelling in grim old walls, amid wide-reaching elms, that have long withstood wind and storm; looking out upon broad shady paths, where, for scores of years, her cares have passed. Great learning she boasts, and great heart withal; and proudly she smiles, when, from all corners of the world, praises go forth for Alma Mater. Now who, think you, reflects her teaching best: and who sheds greatest glory on her name? Evidently those who have developed head and heart alike who, with intellectual vigor, have preserved charity, truth and purpose, in its use, never forgetting the incentives of Students of Honor.

S. B. E.alin