Social Life at Harvard.

The following is reprinted from the article by Mr. Barrett Wendell in the January number of Lippincott's Magazine, on Social Life at Harvard.

"In this hasty picture of Harvard life I may perhaps have sadly disappointed readers who have formed their notions of the subject from sundry common reports frequently alluded to in the public prints. Harvard, according to these authorities, may be an excellent place for learning, but morally it is held to be a sink of iniquity. At Harvard College there are to-day more than a thousand students, from all parts of America, between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five. Among these are naturally a certain number of young reprobates, who rather dislike their escapades to remain unknown. As a class, these students are rich, and may be said, I believe, to come of families not yet used enough to fortune to known quite what to do with it. Generally they are good company, and they are apt to belong to the fashionable societies.

I do not mean for an instant to give color to the charge, which would be absurd if it were not so frequent, that money is a recognized standard of social position at Harvard, that men of limited means are deliberately excluded from any college society, or that a man is ever elected to one simply because he is rich, much as certain public men are elected to the Senate. A man who has nothing but money to recommend him is much more surely put in unenviably conspicuous solitude at Harvard than in most parts of the world.

At this moment it cannot be denied that the relations between students and officers are not as intimate as could be wished. So far as they go, they are charming: each body treats the other with a courtesy that can hardly be excelled. The elective system, among its other benefits, has worked the destruction of the time-honored hostility that used to exist.

At the same time, pleasant as the professional relations of students and instructors are, the great size of the college and the consequently great expense of any formal entertainments prevents these relations from generally becoming more than professional. A few exceptionally good scholars find warm and sympathetic friends in their instructors, and students who are personally introduced to instructors are sure of a cordial welcome. But here the matter ends. I know of hardly any instance where an offer has been neglected to improve opportunities to know students personally. I wish that I could say as much for the rather diffident youths, who, doubtless unmeaningly, have more than once failed to respond to friendly advances. What I have said, however, should be enough to show one of the reasons why I hope in time to see at Harvard a University Club that shall include both students and officers.

A student, as a student, has no more acquaintance with the world about the college than a clerk has in a town where he may happen to be employed. If he is introduced to people, he is sure of a hospitable reception; if not he may stay there, for years without knowing a soul whom he does not meet in a professional way. This is a rather more serious matter than it seems at first, for it involves the fact that the life of many students is passed chiefly in the society of men; and this state of things I believe to be radically unhealthy. Nothing is so good for the moral tone of a growing man as knowing - and knowing well - young girls. Nothing so surely keeps him out of mischief; nothing better helps him out if he has once fallen in. The importance, then, of securing for students who come from a distance some introduction to people living near the college can hardly be overestimated. I am informed, I may add, that some find such social life as introductions would bring in membership of the churches of Cambridge.

We are tending, our critics say, as they have said any time these hundred years, to rear a race of good-humored do nothings, if not worse; and so on. There is but one answer to this. That is to be found in the Harvard spirit of which I have already spoken. Go where you will and look at Harvard men and the work they are doing in the world. It is not brilliant, perhaps; it may lack the uncompromising vigor that the cant of our day describes as practical. But wherever you find Harmen in a body you find honest, self-respecting gentlemen, alive in rare degree to the best ideals of their time.