FRESHMANIA.

"WHEN you were a Freshman, did you make a fool of yourself?" asked a hopeful young friend who feels sure of getting into college, this his fourth time; this was in the new Gymnasium on Class Day. "Some five thousand times," I replied impressively, rushing off to Miss -- of Albany (Albany's population is, surely, chiefly pretty young ladies). The young wretch, after gorging himself with all the salads, rushed at me as I returned pensively from the Alban charms with the comprehensive interrogation, "How?" But I can't spend from now even until after the bed-hour of Beck, '79, explaining the manifold forms of Freshman folly. No, I will write them down, and the Crimson ink-dauber shall placard a notice, and the giddy "sub" shall buy a copy, and become wise. Listen, '83.

Many promising young creatures in '82 thought it their duty to come as near as possible to getting dropped; they succeeded as well as do the equally juvenile youngsters who try to come as near getting drowned as they can by walking on thin ice, and some twenty have got a ducking already, and have been put to soak till next year. They will bring a delicious lotus-eating element into your class, dear Freshmen. Such men never "brace." They find walking on thin ice so exciting, that they keep on trying it, and are drowned forever in the sea of lost degrees on Commencement Day. Now, if I were you, I should not, on the whole, get dropped; I admit it is rather "swell," and gives people the impression that you have come to college only because it is the proper thing, and not to learn anything or prepare yourself for such a vulgar occupation as earning your bread. Still, some men who are gentlemen, and even have money, do not get dropped, and it might, you know, gratify your parents to have you "get through."

Again, don't combine with all that lavishness of expenditure on dress and amusements which you are already acquiring an '82-like stinginess in giving money to the good of your class, or an '80-like indifference to all class organizations.

You ought, after all, to preserve enough interest in the world - you need not have much, of course - to care whether your crew is supported, and whether your class gives say two-thirds of her quota towards its 'Varsity. I 'm quite aware that '82, as you state, failed to support both her crew and the 'Varsity; still, that class did not get a very good reputation by such conduct. Then, too, it is very fine to say, "Confound all class matters, what do I care for my class?" like the '80 men, and though, like '80, liberal with your money, to refuse to give yourself to class objects. But crews and theatricals and all organizations in the class must have earnest officers and hearty support from the members, or they will go to ruin. You won't lose anything by a lack of indifference; the best-liked men in the upper classes are those who do something for those associations to which they belong, and not those who are full of indifference for all except their little (ah! how little) selves.

Again, don't think it absolutely necessary to smoke and frequent the theatre to excess, and drink to the injury of your health. Temperance is not wholly out of date here.

If you do poorly in an examination, say nothing about it, or you will be set down as a fool. If you do well, say still less, or you will be considered a conceited grind. If you decide to go into athletics, take rowing, for you know it has become popular, and base-ball seems to have been artificially kept alive by graduates of some years back. Don't, at all events, go to the Gymnasium, unless the new one becomes fashionable; some men have lost the First Eight, Nine, or Ten in that way. And next year send in a contribution, - barring verses on summer, roughs on the Woman's College, and complaints about Memorial Hall - to

R. X.