Grinds.

There are many kinds of grinds, Not only the college but the world at large possesses them. There is the longhaired grind, (the sweet girl-graduate) the bald-headed grind, and the grindstone. It is rumored in Chicago that the recent explosion in C - e H - e unearthed two new species, the "hard grind" and the "regular grind." Someone who reads this may call this a "grind," but it is not, it is not even a lie. The elder Pliny was a grind, and Vitellius Spiculus was a grind. But they had brains and it paid them to grind. It is even said that the elder Pliny wore glasses. There is an old legend which is to-day told in one of the Swiss villages among the Alps, to the effect that the great Julius stopped there on his way to interview the mighty man of the Helvetii, and it was noticed that the great statesman never raised his eyes throughout his stay from an ancient manuscript, which rumor said had been sent to him from Alexandria. Many were the conjectures as to the nature of the writing. At last an old peasant ventured to approach the reader and gaze over his shoulder. These words, in Caesar's own hand, met his eye, "The Gods confound me if I did not lose two millions of sesterces last night. My villa at Tibur and all the statues which my father brought from Ephesus must go to the auctioneer." In other words, Caius Julius Caesar had been "ground," and by no less a man than "the prudent Catiline."

It is not every one who knows what a grind is, least of all the grind himself. If an intermittent cloister-like life of study is what distinguishes the grind, of what use is his life? It is a preparation for greater things coming after, of course. But some grinds do not seem to have any after, except after midnight and high marks. Archimedes was the very Bayard of grinds. But he ground himself into the grave. I remember once hearing that there are grinds at New Haven who are regularly summoned to the Yale "U. 5" for taking too many courses, and for being too ardent at their devotions in chapel. But as I have never been able to substantiate this, I fear that it is a lie. To return to archetypes, Cicero and Virgil were not grinds, but Epictetus was a grind. The lamp in which Epictetus burned his midnight oil is even now on exhibition in the British Museum along side of the Elgin Marbles. It is as large as a barrel. But to be a grind is it necessary to be a genius? I will not answer this. Victor Hugo says somewhere that it is a tres grande thing to be a bold, bad man. Now a grind is never a bold, bad man. He is just the opposite. He can give you the length in parasangs of Xenephon's march to the sea; he can sketch for you a technical plan of Olympus; he can tell you the exact size of the sail-cloth in which Helen, the divine of women, was wrapped when the lily-like voiced ancients threw one to the other the winged word, as she passed them by; he can tell you who was the grandmother of Apollo; in fine he can tell you almost anything, but he is not a "bold, bad man." What is he, she, or it, then? Well, in the first place he generally "rags something less than 99 per cent., but he does not play the "Advocate's" little poker game. No. He wears glasses. Not dude glasses, nor goggles, nor the dapper gold-bowed spectacles, but great round moon-eyed glasses, glasses that would stew the brain of an ordinary man. And then he reads a little, you know. He is up with the lark; he is up with the bat; in fact he is never down. But speaking of being down, I remember a grind who was down once. He was making a call. His amorous eye glared from behind its glassy shield like a cat's eye in the dark. The conversation had flagged. Suddenly he brightened up. "Miss S - S - can you tell me the number of right angles in a triangle?" A pause. "Why it depends on the size of the triangle." That idea had never struck him before, and he succumbed. To this day he mutters, as he walks, over and over again, "it depends on the size."