The "Advocate."

The eighth number of this volume of the Advocate opens with a number of rather severe but well-taken editorials on the management of our athletic organizations and of the boat club especially. There is a great deal of truth in the statement that the failure of men to attend the meetings at which the officers are elected throws a large share of the responsibility of whatever mismanagement there may be on their own shoulders. The position that the Advocate takes in regard to the Glee Club is one that all of us would like to see adopted by the faculty.

"A Turning Point" is a fairly good story, though one might wish that a theme that has been so well worn in the fiction of the modern and the ancient world and which our college papers have hitherto avoided as though by a better instinct, would be left to the treatment of master hands only. They might possibly be expected to show this episode in a new light. The melodramatic dens ex machina in the shape of a "golden star" is a bit wearying.

"Dishonesty Bounn" is fairly amusing. It is labored in parts and the whole makes one ask whether the writer might not have told the whole allegory in shorter words. Condensation would have made the point of the tale stronger and more enjoyable.

"Four 'Funny' Characters," is a cynical sketch of the life of four different types of college student. The style is rather too jerky and unpolished. Carlyle is jerky and unpolished; but Carlyle is forcible. Nobody can read "My Friend Blobbs" without enjoying its cleverness and the clear individuality which the writer makes out for his friend Blobbs. It seems he knows his man well, and he surely succeeds in making him "an open book" for all who will read this amusing sketch.

The writer of "Tree of Knowledge" has considerable imagination, but why not put it into something else than the scientific delerious style of electricity and paralysis? Such as it is the story is well told, however.

Of verse this number of the Advocate contains four pieces. "The Oak" is well-conceived; is very good in form. The writer has a peculiar bent toward this kind of simile and he handles it very well. Of even a more serious character than this short moral reflection is "A Song of Life and Death," which is a rather fine parable in verse. "Love's Arrow" and "The Rain" hardly deserve much comment.