The Library Advantages.

If one takes a look in the library any morning or afternoon and reflects, as he sees the men at work, on how small their number is when compared with the whole university, he must necessarily think of the opportunities which by far the greatest portion of the students are throwing away. For example, out of the hundred or more men in History XIII hardly fifteen daily make use of the books reserved by Dr. Hart, although a large amount of reference work is necessary in that course in order to reap its full benefit. The advantages of a library like the one here are manifest, and if one does not practically discover it when he is a freshman, he surely ought during his second year make up what he lost the first. The Harvard spirit does not drive men to work. They must find out for themselves, and must not forget under cover of physical improvement or bettering their ability to associate with men that the fundamental object of University life is to educate the mind. There are men who take pride in saying that they have never seen the inside of the library; from these men, freshmen, coming from the restrictions of school life and imagining that the freedom of the Harvard system means a license for laziness, learn to consider it beneath their dignity to study. They believe that the library alcoves are the haunts of men whose shoulders are stooped and whose eyes are dimmed by a continued perusal of dismal texts. One should not sate himself with too much library but a judicious use of this advantage, among the many others which students in Cambridge possess, adds a depth and scope to a man's education which is absolutely essential to one who desires to be considered a cultured gentleman. Everyone must know how mortifying it is to have people talk to you about men of whom you have never heard or of books which you have never read. Why then should opportunities to lessen the number of those books and men, and so strengthen the mind, be cast aside for the sake of a boyish bravado or a sometime fashionable negligence?

W. B.