Current Advocate is Entertaining

The current number of the Advocate is entertaining reading. Mr. Meeker's briskly told story, "On 'The Street of the Blazing Lights'", presents a mysterious Kentucky major, who is wiser than the world knows,--wiser, indeed, than the reader suspects, till the amusing "denouement," on the famous street, makes one wish that the suspense had lasted longer. More ambitious is Mr. Murdock's "A Change of Heart," which tells how a smug "scientific philanthropist," at last convinced by sad experience of his own inability to help his fellowmen by mere doles of money, is converted, not to a more humane sort of philanthropy, but to golf! Possibly the characters in the story would be more life-like if the author had let them speak more for themselves; the setting and atmosphere are well handled. The unexpected "denouement" confronts one again in Mr. Burke's clever dramatic sketch, "Discipline," in which the reader comes to realize only at the end that he has been reading a play within a play. The shock is delicious.

Probably the most distinguished performance in the number is the myth contributed by Mr. Fairbanks. Under a rubric from Plato (unfortunately misprinted), in a manner than just avoids preciosity on the one hand and banality on the other, he describes the soul that lingers this side of the river of Lethe, unwilling to forget--what? A kiss. At last she resigns herself, compelled to know that "all souls turn to Lethe at the last, because it is not worth while to remember what others forget."

In Mr. Clark's fragment of "vers libre," "The Sea Nymph," we find a vagrant memory fixed in a present mood. The lines, except the second, are musical; Mr. Clark has secured his effect with rare economy of effort. The two sonnets by Mr. Norris, "An Old Story," and "Winter Sunrise," dealing with more clearly defined subjects, show more direct treatment. In form, they are slightly irregular, and suffer from a jerkiness due to the large proportion of end-stopped lines. But the description is good; and Mr. Norris is particularly felicitous in his closing lines.

Mr. Cutler's ingenious letter on "The Failure of Distribution" is not concerned, as some might suppose from the title, with "unearned increments," but with the recent modification of the elective system. He is disturbed by the thought that some brilliant young men may be handicapped in their careers as specialists by the necessity of distributing some of their courses in other departments than their favored ones. Probably he will not succeed in convincing many readers that his fear is reasonable. His appeal to the example of our grandfathers seems singularly inapposite: to be sure, our grandfathers did not know the term "distribution," but they were required to study Greek, Latin, mathematics, logic, and other forgotten subjects.

The editorials in the number are quite harmless; the reviews are competent.