Dr. Holmes's Hard Words.

PRINCETON, N. J., Nov. 15.

Dr. McCosh attended Harvard's celebration as an invited guest. He probably expected to derive some benefit for his college and much pleasure for himself from his visit. He naturally noticed that the stock of honorary degrees conferred by Harvard was exhausted before Princeton was reached. It had occurred to him that among the Faculty of Princeton College were men worthy of the hightest distinction it was in Harvard's power to grant, and it was not pleasant to think they had been overlooked while degrees were simply scattered among the Faculties of other colleges. Dr. McCosh might have overlooked this apparent forgetfulness on the part of Harvard had not Dr. Holmes, as he imagined, furnished him fresh food for unpleasant thought in the following lines:

"As once of old from Ida's lofty height

The flaming signal flashed across the night,

So Harvard's beacon sheds its unspent rays

Till every watch ower shows its kindling blaze.

Caught from a spark and fanned by every gale,

A brighter radiance gilds the roof of Yale;

Amherst and Williams bid their flambeaus shine,

And Bowdoin answers through her groves of pine:

O'er Princeton's sands the far reflections steals,

Where mighty Edwards stamped his iron heel;

Nay, on the hill where old beliefs were bound

Fast as if Styx had girt them nine times round.

Bursts such a light that trembling souls inquire

If the whole church of Calvin is on fire!

Well may they ask, for what so brightly burns

As a dry creed that nothing ever learns?

Thus link by link is knit the flaming chain

Lit by the torch of Harvard's hallowed plain."

When Dr. Holmes had given his muse full play and the muse had refused to say anything more, Dr. McCosh quietly took his departure and boarded the next train for Princeton. He was as indignant as a Scotchman who thinks he has cause to be generally is, and when his friends and fellow-workers at the college heard the version of all that had happened at Harvard's celebration they were indignant, too, and extremely glad that Dr. McCosh had absented himself from the banquet that was designed to act as a sort of capstone to the celebration.

After giving the matter some thought but not until he was thoroughly convinced that an intentional slight was put upon Princeton College, Dr. McCosh wrote to the secretary of the committee which had had charge of the arrangements and from whom he had received his invitation. In this letter he wrote that he had attended the celebration on the invitation of Harvard College and had "met treatment that could not possibly by any chance have happened to a Harvard representative at Princeton."

Dr. McCosh continued in his letter, in view of the circumstances to which he had alluded, he believed his presence would not have been welcome at the banquet and that his most dignified course was to take his leave.

Dr. McCosh's letter shook the placidity that generally reigns at Harvard, and it was at once decided that the matter was far too serious to be settled by a secretary of arrangements. President Eliot took it in hand, and he wrote to Dr. McCosh in a dual capacity as President of Harvard University and as an intimate friend.

Dr. Eliot's explanation did not satisfy Dr. McCosh, and there will probably be further correspondence.

It had been claimed that Dr. McCosh was also dissatisfied with remarks of James Russell Lowell. There is nothing in the claim, for when it was mentioned to Dr. McCosh, he said:

"I approve of Mr. Lowell's remarks out and out, especially all that he said about elective studies and Greek."

"I simply came home," he said, "after listening to Mr. Holmes. He spoke so contemptuously of a dry theology - and his remarks were applied to this college, for he mentioned Princeton - that I took the earliest train I could get for home. When I went to Harvard I did not wish a degree for myself, but I was disappointed when Princeton was left out and the neighboring colleges got honors."

Dr. McCosh admitted, though with some reluctance, that the fashion in which Princeton was treated, shortened his stay at Harvard. He refused to discuss the contents of the letter which had brought a prompt reply from Dr. Eliot, nor would he divulge the nature of that reply.

Dr. McCosh received plenty of encouragement to-day. The college town was crowded with Alumni and other friends of the institution, who wished to attend the funeral of Dr. Hodge. Without exception they supported Dr. McCosh in the position he has taken, and if the ears of the Autocrat did not burn to-day, there's no dependence to be placed in the old superstition. - N. Y. Times.