RECENT ARTICLES.

THE article in the last Advocate in reference to the objectionable editorial of the Transcript is so admirable an exponent of the popular feeling among undergraduates as regards false representations in public journals, that it arouses in me a desire to attempt an exposition of the sources of these evil communications, and to suggest some means by which at least a diminution of such occurrences may be effected. And it is only because the writer sees that the increase of such publications is likely to effect some serious results that he feels at liberty to broach the subject at all.

Judging from the nature of such articles, and the manner in which they are presented to the public, - of course optional with the editors, - we see that those papers are the least inclined to be biassed that have connected with their editorial rooms college graduates. This point becomes more important when we remember that the number of college graduates who go into journalism - meaning newspaper work - is doubling every year, notwithstanding Horace Greeley's famous remark that he "would rather have a bull in a china shop."

Even the independent Herald is unable to present to its readers an account of our sports which does not indicate on its face an intent, or at least a desire, to create false impressions. And yet its representative is admitted to our sports, - although his former offences were rank in the extreme. Not only admitted, but given a seat and a chance to write!

And so our surest remedy is to exclude him. Let those who have the authority present the facts of the case to the editor in chief of the Herald, and there will be no more trouble in that quarter.

In the second place, "There's a chiel amang ye takin' notes"; in fact, several of them. For there are, or have been, several undergraduates connected with Boston papers. There is no harm or shadow of injury in that, so long as their efforts are confined to the delineation of absolute facts, and their imaginations are not drawn on for the sake of another paragraph. But we may safely leave to their sense of honor not to wilfully misrepresent.

Lastly, - placed last because we wish to dwell at length on it, - it seems to us that our College journals are to some extent to blame for the false impressions received by those who are only too anxious to enlarge upon them by a malicious push of their reportorial pens. It is very seldom, indeed, that an article appears in the Advocate or Crimson from which the public can get an erroneous impression of any phase of our college life. But when one does appear that admits of more than one rendering, and allows the reader to draw his own inferences, it cannot fail to have considerable influence in the wrong direction. Such an article as this was that entitled "The Lower Classes" in the last Crimson.

I find by inquiry that many readers were compelled to think the writer in earnest during the first half-column. They then ran on such a sand-bar of conceit - provided he was in earnest - that they concluded it was sarcasm. After that the article was such a curious combination of sarcasm and burlesque, and so frequently did there occur conflicting opinions, that it was impossible to form any idea of the article as a whole. Many unacquainted with college life must have thought there were facts there well concealed, and this is where the harm comes in; we must not give any grounds for the formation of mistaken conceptions. From the nature of the subject, or from its treatment, very few would judge the article referred to to be burlesque, because it is the very essence of a burlesque that the subject be familiar. That this subject is in any sense so familiar as to allow it to be burlesqued is inadmissible.

I claim, in conclusion, that all such articles as will admit of a detrimental construction - however far-fetched - should be most carefully scanned by the editors before being printed.

J. B. M.