Prof, Sumichrast Reviews Monthly

The current number of the Harvard Monthly begins and ends with articales on athletics, and are both readable and interesting. The first one, by A. W. Hinkel '08, attacks forcefully the existing rule of the Athletic Committee requiring the minor teams to be self-supporting. This rule, the writer contends, has done exceedingly little good and a great deal of harm, especially in promoting a competitive system of subscription-soliciting among aspirants to the position of team managers. The evils of the present mode of attaining the-end insisted upon by the Athletic Committee are feelingly, told, but the writer does not continue himself to adverse criticism-always an easy matter-he puts forward a plan for which he claims the striking advantage of doing away with the insufferable subscriptions and the placing of the financing of University athletics upon a sound basis.

The second article on this burning topic is the Editional, and it is a sensible piece of writing, whether looked at from the undergraduate or the Faculty point of view; for it will hardly be denied by the most ardent opponent of "two numerous intercollegiate contests" that in common fairness the large undergraduate body is entitled to know where it stands in fact, with respect to the sports in which it takes so deep an interest.

The more serious articles on other subjects are first of all a brightly written account of "The Taking of a City." by

E. E. Hunt, who assuredly understands how to tell his story. It is an account, well put together and well wrought out, of the efforts of the Wabash to gain entrance into the Pennsylvania's stronghold at Pittsburgh. It is effective and vigorous from beginning to end.

R. Altrocchi's "Two Recent Novels of Religion" is a praiseworthy effort in criticism, and the conclusion reached by the writer is a sound one. One feels that he is not quite able to express fully the effect produced upon him by the perusal of "The Christian" and "The Saint"; that he strives to render clearly the differing value of the two books, and does not quite succeed; but one also feels that he is on the right road and that with more experience of life and a larger knowledge of literature-for which he plainly has love-he will do good work in this line.

The fiction is not up to the standard of the more solid portion of the number. "The Tryst of the Princess Yvonne" is ambitious, but the ambition has not o'erleapt itself; indeed, it has fallen very short. The dramatic situations fall to stand up, and the ending of the tale leaves' the reader quite unmoved. The"Cupid in Yorkshire," by E. W. Huckel, is very much better, but might more properly have been entitled "The Precocious Child," for the powers of observation and reasoning displayed by the supposed narrator, are of a high order, and are properly recognized by the foxhunting, three-bottle uncle, who is led to happiness and matrimony by this variation on "Wee Willie Winkle."

The poetry is good, on the whole, although P.A.Hutchinson's "The Secret of the Sphinx"remains mysterious even after the revelations-but that may be the reader's fault. There is a striving after expression in the two pieces, "Love and Death" and "Love by the Sea," by J.H.Wheelock, but the effort was worth the making, and the result is not unsatisfactory. The "De Senectute" of W.Tinekom-Fernandez is distinetly good, and the "Fair Harvard" of B.A.Gould, while unequal, has a lift and a swing that take the attention and keep it. J.T.Addison's "Solomon's Ship" is suggestive of color and feeling,and pleases the ear