TRADITIONS AND TOMMYROT

Above the swarm of books on Harvard life and Harvard traditions has appeared one predestined to stand as the most authoritive, the richest and the fullest. Only one man is equipped with the experience and information to write such a classic, and that is President Emeritus Eliot. Almost three-quarters of a century of continuous contact with Harvard have fitted him preeminently to collect the traditions and expound the doctrines which have guided Harvard men for a dozen generations.

His book, "Harvard Memories", is a collection of three addresses made by him on various recent occasions. They concern the early history of the college, the development along liberal lines up to the present alsotive stem, the de strakes relation of student to teachers, the stores of the historic building in the Yard. Its immediate popularity is avoids by the foot that a second brining has been reached only two weeks after its first appearance. But the difference between this review of Harvard's past and other popular works on the same subject will, no doubt, be marked. Flandrau's well-known "Diary of a Freshman" and "Harvard Episodes", and other delightful memoirs of the same kind go more or less deeply into the undergraduate life, the pursuits of the students, and the quaint customs, like carving the benches of Sever, which became so firmly rooted and persist with such remarkable vitality.

But after all, the old pump and John, the orange-man, are gone. Heated cannonballs are no longer necessary to warm the dormitories, and holidays are not celebrated by broaching kegs of beer in the college yard. The memory of these things may long be cherished, but they are really only part of the scenery; their modern descendants are the Waldorf and Terry, Jimmie's and the double-O, and without doubt these successors will be fondly remembered by present-day undergraduates. The traditions of Harvard are something different--something as old as Harvard but as alive today as ever. The founders planted in their new pledged college seeds of free-thinking, of independence which have proved so fruitful, and succeeding generations have added much. Harvard tradition has grown steadily, for its roots are firmly fixed and its stalk points always in the same direction. It is this deeper aspect that Dr. Eliot can present as can no other, and nothing is more worthy of his attention.