The University Courier.
25
shirt plays in modern civilization. Think, if you can, what society would be without it Only imagine yourself wandering through the interstices of a great city without that most necessary article of apparel-a shirt. Think of the cold, cutting manner in which you would be viewed even by your friends,and also by these bleak February zephyrs. The very thought is appalling. One never knows how valuable a thing is until he has missed it. A little experience I had recently brought this fact most vividly before my mind.
I was going to a swell party and did not think to inquire when I came home for supper if my laundry had arrived. I had just started to dress when suddenly the thought of that laundry dawned upon me. A hasty survey of the room satisfied me that it had not come. What was to be done? I hurriedly searched my dresser. Not a shirt—a clean shirt—was to be found. Jim's were all too small. On a dead run I dashed up town—only to be baffled again. Every store was closed. I stopped at Rob's room on my way back. He was not at home, neither was Tom. Hot, mad and disconsolate, I stormed up stairs again, and gave vent to my feelings by turning a few chairs, kicking the bedstead and giving the atmosphere generally a deep purple tinge. Finally in my desperation I tried on one of Jim's shirts. It lacked about an inch of coming together in the back. Something had to be done. It was too late to refuse to go. Miss M. expected me. I tried to fasten it together with a rubber. The coup-de-taut seemed successful. I stretched my neck. The collar shot up over my ears. Again I tried it and again the maneuver was repeated. That collar was more than ambitious. But after a long and desperate struggle my patience was rewarded. By a most careful adjustment of my head the collar stayed in place and I appeared at the party an hour and a half later, with the wan and sickly smile of the man at a picnic who suddenly discovers that his "galluses" are broken and that there is at least fifteen minutes intermission between the top of his trousers and his vest.
EXCHANGES.
Within the last few years a marked change has taken place in the college magazine. Formerly the college papers followed very closely the popular periodicals, and filled their columns with "scholarly" dissertations, and dry "instructive," and consequently uninteresting, fiction. But nowadays college writers have a far different task before them. They must interest and entertain their readers, not instruct them. Most of the college magazines of our leading institutions are realizing this fact. The Brunonian has the following to say in this regard:
"The attitude of the college press toward story writing is very suggestive. The longer stories seem to be growing fewer with every issue and the periodicals which are introducing fiction for the first time seem disposed to leave them alone altogether. College editors are waking up to the fact that the public demand condensation here as anywhere else; the age is too busy to listen to a man who cannot concentrate what he has to say. The modern writer of fiction must often say in a dozen words what his ancestors spread over a page and contrive to increase the artistic effect in so doing. He must also grant his reader what has been called 'a presumption of brains.' It is a fatal mistake to tell the reader everything; he must be allowed to find out for himself the meaning of hints dropped here and there. After all, he is most successful who can leave the most to his reader's imagination; he alone will be followed with interest to the end and re-read with increasing pleasure."
In rummaging through some old files of the COURIER this terse "Essay on Man" was discovered and its aptness forbids it to be forgotten:
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"At ten, a child,
At twenty, wild,
At thirty, strong, if ever.
At forty, wise,
At fifty, rich,
At sixty—good—or never."
A joint debate has been arranged between the Universities of Michigan and Wisconsin.