Review of Current Advocate

In this issue the Advocate begins a series of articles intended to aid Seniors in choosing their future occupations. Professor W. F. Harris sets a high standard of practical helpfulness for the series in discussing "The Consular Service as a Profession." He holds the encouraging opinion that a return to the spoils system is "too remote to prevent any ambitious young man from fitting himself for the office of consul." Coming directly to the point of interest to college men, he tells how to become a candidate for consular examinations, what posts beginners may obtain, and what hopes of advancement they may cherish.

By way of verse, Mr. Aiken contributes pretty lines upon a mid-winter visit from Pan, and Mr. Nickerson edifying reflections upon "Loafers in the Park." Mr. Tinckom-Fernandez's sonnet "Neglect" is a delphic utterance, which I cannot interpret. He has lavished pains upon polishing the phrases, but spared them in correcting the proof-sheets.

Among the stories, "Pete La Farge" by Mr. Ernst is notable as a triumph over limitations of space. Though but a trifle over three pages long, it lacks scarcely one of the properties which the current practice of our best ten-cent magazines proves helpful toward securing publication. Local color, uncouth dialect, primal passion, heroic resignation, a moral struggle, and a savage fight march in perfect order to an artistically vague ending. A fit companion to "Pete La Farge" is "The Morrigan." Mr. Schenck piles on lurid horrors with the ungrudging hand of love. Beside his sketch, Mr. Proctor's clever "Page from Gorky" seems pale and ineffective. After the reader has shuddered at "the great black raven" flapping slowly across the sky in Mr. Schenck's closing paragraph, he should take W. C. G. 's mild moralizing upon "The Dilletante" as an antidote.