RETALIATION.

FOR years Harvard students have complained of the exorbitant cost of living in Cambridge, and, to remedy this evil, have devised many methods by which to prevent the intolerable extortion of the tradespeople. All these devices, however, from that of having book agents among the students to that of dispensing with fires in winter to reduce the price of coal, have had many weak points, which, in truth, have caused their failure; but at last the eagles of victory have perched upon our banners, and, although we have not succeeded in reducing prices, we are at least avenged!

A year or two ago it occurred to the fertile mind of some student that an honest penny, not to say several honest dollars, might be turned by inducing the shopkeepers of Boston and Cambridge to pay a certain sum to him to print on a sheet of pasteboard their advertisements with the tabular view of the College exercises. These sheets should be distributed to the men in the several dormitories, and thus many an unsuspecting youth would be inveigled into buying the wares of the merchants. The plan was no sooner formed than executed; the students were not entrapped, but alas for the tradesmen! Morning after morning, I fancy, as each of these unfortunate people opened his modest "place of business," he turned his inquiring gaze upon the passers-by, as if seeking for a youth whose appearance betokened him as coming from the classic shades of the Square. After looking from sunrise until the mists from the Back Bay had chilled him through, he at last understood that he had been deceived; he had advertised, but with no return. Praying that he might be blessed with only one more interview with the honorable youth who had beguiled him into paying twenty dollars to furnish the students with tabular views, the edges of which were ragged with torn advertisements, he slowly plodded homeward his weary way, a sadder and a poorer man. This is really the case; the shopkeepers of the two cities have been persuaded by some one to believe that it is to their interest to have their advertisements distributed to the men at their rooms. The men who have carried out this novel scheme, it is to be presumed, have made some money by means of it; the advertisers most certainly have lost some.

This, perhaps, is but one of the many inscrutable ways of Providence. We have for a long time been defrauded of our money by the exorbitant prices which have been set by those who supply us with the necessaries of life. Now at last we have them on the hip; and, although the number of those who gain by this new method of retribution is quite small, nevertheless, as they are a credit to the College by reason of their shrewdness, we who have suffered do not grudge them the rewards of their labors.

That the enterprising men who have managed this matter may not be deterred from punishing the shopkeepers by the consciousness that through themselves some little discredit may be reflected upon the students at large, that the credulity of their victims may be so strengthened that they will pay to have their advertisements printed even on the bills of fare at the commons, and that thus we may be most fully avenged, - is my heartfelt prayer.

M.