Variety Feature of Illustrated

A pleasing and distinctive feature of the Illustrated has always been the variety of subjects treated in its pages. Such a magazine, in effect a pictorial chronicle of undergraduate activity, can take up topics out of place in other College publications, though none the less of interest to the student body. Thus, in the present issue of the Illustrated, we find titles ranging from the Brunswick Lion to the origin of the hockey team; from student life at Oxford to the new stroke at Yale all of them suited to attract the attention of the reader.

But in looking through these articles one gathers a confuses impression pf dissatisfaction. Something seems to be wrong. The subjects are good, the opinions expressed are for the most part sound: what can be the matter? The answer is to be found in the leading article by Mr. Coggeshall, "A Harvard Man's Impressions of Oxford." Like the other contents of the number this article is in no sense a literary essay. It is of a "newsy" character appropriate to the magazine. But it possesses distinction of style; it is readable. The other articles hold the reader rather by the interest of their subject matter than by the skill of presentation.

Mr. Smith gives a somewhat exuberantly enthusiastic account of the student conference at Kansas City, but even the printer's error of inserting the tail piece several pages before the conclusion cannot conceal the evident sincerity with which it is written.

Several curious customs of Leland Stanford University are explained by Mr. Barry, and Mr. Bullard decides that the thesis system is in itself good; faults in its application are due to procrastination on the part of students--something that has perhaps been suspected before.

The Illustrated is quite right in refusing to regard itself as a vehicle for literary graces, but profiting by Mr. Coggeshall's admirable contribution on Oxford, it should realize how infiantely more readable is an article treated with distinction than one slovenly written, however interesting in subject matter.