IS HARVARD A HOLE?

I HAVE often been struck with the number of epithets that are applied to our University. As each person's opinion differs, so does his epithet. A fond mother declares that Cambridge is a horrid place (whatever that may mean) for young men. A maiden aunt, who has heard of her nephew's troubles, that it is as much as a boy's life is worth to go to such a college, and that she would not send a son there if she had one. A father, that it has great advantages, but is frightfully expensive. Our young lady friend, who has all her information from the Lampoon and from Snodkins, '80, thinks it must be a most charming, fascinating place; the men horribly bad (oh! Snodkins, '80) and delightful, and at once wishes herself a collegian. Such are some of the remarks we hear outside. College men, of course, have their own peculiar facon de panler. Of all the epithets that they use, the most remarkable is that of a "Hole." The meaning of this word has often puzzled me, as I have heard it from men as different as the meanings they apparently attach to it.

For instance, the Freshman who has had his leading-strings cut that he might come to college, dubs our University a "hole," either contrasting with the pure and good influences of home the vice and debauchery which he has been told exist here, or because he wishes you to think that he has tasted more deeply of the pleasures of life elsewhere than it is possible to do in Cambridge. Then, again, your man of the world calls it a "hole," - meaning, I fancy, that we live in a provincial, slow, one-horse sort of a place. If you tell this gentleman that you consider hole to be rather strong he politely informs you that had you known anything better (I suppose he means worse), or had you mixed at all with the world, you also would call Cambridge a hole. This leaves you with the comfortable feeling that you are very ignorant of things in general, being acquainted with the manners and customs of "holes" only. However, I will leave my readers to find out the exact meaning of the word as used in this way, with hopes that they have not lived, as I have, in a "Hole."

N.