PRESIDENT ELIOT'S LAST REPORT.

In President Eliot's last report to the Board of Overseers, he deals at length with two questions of great importance to the undergraduates. In regard to three-year graduation, the President believes that the regular College term should be reduced to that period. Such a change would raise the standard of labor in College, prevent the present confusion of the fourth year and "bring earlier into their professions the best trained young men." These results would undoubtedly be well worth accomplishing, but the benefit and pleasure to be derived from spending four years in Harvard College are not things, to be lightly dispensed with. In behalf of the many men who prefer the present system in spite of its defects, we venture to disagree with the President and advocate the continuance of the ordinary four-year residence, accompanied by an increase in the requirements for a degree. IF such a step were taken, we believe that all the good results desired by him would be brought about. A greater amount of work would be necessary than at present; the Senior class would be unified; and the average age at graduation would be lowered with the realization of the necessity of getting into business at an early age. It should not be made impossible to be graduated in three yours, for that would be decidedly unfair to men of humble means, but the three-years degree should be made so difficult to obtain that only the diligent students could be successful.

We are glad to see the President's appreciation of the improvement in athletic, as shown in the way the sports themselves have been conducted and in the growing feeling that they, ought always to yield pleasure and healthful vigor instead of grinding, unenjoyable work and injurious exhaustion." Football he still considers unfit for college uses, both because of the roughness of the game itself and of the way it affects gambling and exaggerated excitement.