HISTORY 13 AGAIN.

EDITORS DAILY CRIMSON: - I shall feel deeply obliged to you if you will allow me to answer '88's remarkable communication which appeared in yesterday's issue of the CRIMSON.

'88 has kindly accused the students in History 13 of laziness because they clamor for a list of general readings - a just observation, perhaps, but let us look at the situation for a moment. '88 does his topic reading, and, if we can judge from the tone of his communication, he does it with marked success. He can always find the books, and that is exactly the reason we can't. After the lecture we go to the library and find that "88 has the reserved book in queseion, and sadder still, the only reserved book. If there is no impropriety, we will ask "'88" when he will get through? About 12 o'clock? We have a recitation then which we can hardly cut, but we will come back at 1 - cut our lunch - and try to secure the book. No, '89 who had his lunch at 12.30, has it now, but why do we not go to work on that volume on the shelf. It treats of the fourth topic, it is true, but we can work up the first one next week. That is what we call progressive reading. If "'88" does his topic reading that way, we do not wish to imitate him. Rear backwards! You might as well begin a house by setting the roof, or sit down at whist and lear out before the cards are all dealt around.

"'88" says that "it is easier to lounge in an easy chair and read a book or two in connection with a certain course, than to sit at a desk in the library, or in your own room and learn from consultation from a number of writers and books what the real ethics of a question is." We heartily agree with him. It is much easier to sit in an easy chair, but if we sit at our desk - in our own room to - and discard the easy chair, isn't it rather hard on "'88" if we get the very pile of books out for consultation that "'88" wants?

There are two hundred or more students in History 13, and let us suppose that there are twenty-five that "'88" will not term "lazy." How is that pile of books to be distributed at the close of the day? "'88" secures three out of five, let us say, and '89 takes the rest, and then they sit down at their desks - in their own room - and when the unfortunate twenty three men cry out for general reading they say: - 'Lo! you are lazy - look at us - we work - why don't you?" "'88" now says with the utmost truth that Dr. Hart has perfected his list of general readings at a great expense of time and trouble." This is undoubtedly true, and only adds to the obligation we owe Dr. Hart as a sincere instructor, but isn't it a little odd that he should work so hard to encourage his students in "laziness."

Last lecture there was a little blue-book circulating in the History 13 section, containing a petition for a list of general readings. The writer of this article put his name down on account of sheer laziness, he admits, but he saw other names that were irreproachable - names of men concerning whom "'88" would hesitate a long while before advancing his accusation of "laziness."

It is a matter of reproach that we do not wish to do our work in a fragmentary manner - and fragmentary it must be, if we cannot find the reserved books, or if some other man finds them before us? It is a matter of reproach that we sit in our rooms - aye, in an easy chair, and read our history as a connected whole, working from the beginning - cause and result - and not as ninety nine cases out of a hundred we must have done with the topic reading: - working up the result and leaving the cause till next week? It is not the amount of work merely, that counts in History 13, but the amount of work done in the right way. A goes to the library; spends forenoon in ransacking the shelves, with meagre result - not his fault to be sure, but C's who is ahead of him. B brings his books for general reading - sits in his easy chair and studies the whole history intelligently. A says he works hard; B says he doesn't. Then A growls at B.

M.