A QUESTION OF CHEERS.

In an exceedingly gloomy article on the subject of public and college "cheering," the New York Times takes occasion as follows to berate the colleges for their share in the evolution of the great American custom: "Whether Yale or Harvard was guilty of docking the "hurrah" of its first syllable, and making the syllables, "rah, rah, rah" do duty in the guise of "three cheers," it is now impossible to ascertain. The two colleges, however, seem jointly responsible for spreading a depraved taste for "rah" among other colleges and in setting the fashion of distinctive college cheers. Doubtless Yale and Harvard have done much to expand the chests and cultivate the biceps of American youth, but these benefits have been dearly purchased at the price of the invention of the exasperating "rah, rah, rah" which is now heard wherever two or three college students are gathered together.

Each college seems to vie with the others in its strivings after idiocy in compounding its private cheer. All of their cheers begin with the "rah, rah, rah," and are distinguished from one another by different additions. The students of Columbia repeat each letter of the name of their college, and seem to think they have done well in convincing those who hear their revolting cheet that they can spell at least one word correctly. The Williams students finish their cheer with the words "Willyums, yams, yums," and the students of-

But why multiply examples of this "babble of Dead Sea apes." The old hurrah is obsolete, and, so far, as our colleges are concerned, what sounds like the incoherent ravings of idiocy has taken its place. This is a very sad state of things. Our future as a nation will be gloomy indeed unless we abandon the "rahs," the "rockets," and the idiotic sentences which have taken the place of the old mouth-filling and earappalling hurrah. We shall deserve no respect at the throats of hurrahing nations, and we shall even be despised by the Frenchman, who although he tries to cheer by expressing a wish that somebody or something may live, has at least never descended to "rockets," or to such hideous yells as "Willyums, yams, yums."