MAIN STREET AT HARVARD

The conclusions which are forced in Mr. Sinclair Lewis's "Main Street" throw a certain light on the University, and show another way in which one can realize the value of the educational facilities which it is the privilege of its students to enjoy. For there is a Main Street here as much as there is one at Gopher Prairie; for after all, of what does the life of the undergraduate cibsist? It doesn't vary to any great extent; one goes to the same classes, hears the same lectures, sees the same faces; one cats at the same place every day, where all is familiar the to eye and the car--and the taste; in the extra-curriculum activities, football men go through monotonous practice after monotonous practice; managers have the same difficulties of administration; work on the papers becomes fundamentally the same scramble for copy. Finally one goes to the familiar room, fishes his pajamas from under the pillow--where the unhygienic goodies insist of putting them--adjusts the window-shade so the street light will not shine in his eyes, just as he has done fifty times before. Routine makes up the undergraduate's life; we are living in the Main Street of Harvard.

Yet somehow, it is not routine; each day the same thing seems different. Wherein lies this difference? At Gopher Prairie, Carol Kennicott found doing the same thing every day boredom incarnate; but it is not so here, Because, at bottom we are living in an intellectual community; in Gopher Prairie Carol sound no intellectual life, and tried in vain to stimulate it. Here it seems almost as though a great many were trying to avoid it; in spite of them however, it persists, and on the solid foundations of this intellectual existence is based the apparently monotonous round of everyday activity.