Communication.

EDITORS DAILY CRIMSON.- Some time ago there appeared in your columns an article urging the necessity of establishing in college a course of instruction in short-hand writing. I am surprised that such a valuable suggestion has met with so little support from the students.

No doubt the failure of recent appeals in the interest of athletics and the fate of the last prayer petition has pretty thoroughly dampened our enthusiasm for reforms. Here, however, we have a new theme, and one which appears to me to be of the greatest consequence, not only to the students, but to the general reputation of the college.

The value of good notes has been ably discussed and long and thoroughly acknowledge. If, then, as we are aware, a majority of the subjects of study in college are taught by a system of instruction from which the students' abilities to profit rests almost wholly upon his success in getting good notes at lectures, is it not all important that no expedient be left untried which can possibly aid him in this very vital part of his work? In a word, this note-taking, if I may be permitted the expression, is the wholesale industry of the college, and with this fact in view, I do not think any single addition to the present curriculum of electives would so materially increase the average standard of scholarship as the addition of a course in short-hand writing. Not only would any proficiency in the subject be very gratifying to the student as an undergraduate, but it must also be a very considerable accomplishment to have away from college.

F. C. S., '87.