A FAIR ELECTION.

MY father is a lawyer. When I left home last fall for college, he said: "My dear boy some time you may be in want of advice such as I cannot give you. If that is the case, go to the best lawyer in Boston and state your trouble to him. Some men, and many women, like to send their sons to parsons. But I tell you, a lawyer knows forty times as much about the world as a parson does."

I told him that I was much obliged, but that, as he knew, I was not very apt to take advice. You must mark, though, that I couched this in far gentler terms than the words I here put down.

Well, I had got on very well without advice through my Freshman year up to the time when the Elective Pamphlet came out, but then I was plunged in doubt as to what to take. It would have been easier if I had any tastes, but beyond ice-cream and soda, I don't think I have any.

I thought of taking Chemistry 1 to find out how to make soda; but a friend told me that he knew no more of Chemistry after taking the course than before it, which discouraged me. And so on through the whole pamphlet, there's not a course which I have n't heard spoken against. (I must say, however, that the only objection to Botany was that it tired one so to get to recitation).

Then, on the other hand, every course, even in the Mathematics, had a couple of admirers, and it being known that I was searching for knowledge, there grew up a sort of free fight on the electives in my room, at which I was moderator, and while one grind yelled in one ear the praises of the Hitopadeca, one on the other side recited Beowulf, and another screamed the theory of Quaternions down my neck.

At last, one morning, I remembered, as I dressed myself, my father's advice; so I took the morning car into Boston, cutting my Latin. I remembered that my father said, "Go to the best lawyer," so I walked around in contemplation of the office, and at last went to the man who has the best room in Sears Block. That was the handsomest building, by long odds, and, thought I, the men who can afford it ought to be the best men.

I had my electives with me, with remarks as to their hardness, which I had gleaned from the members of the higher classes, pencilled on the margin.

I stated my case and gave him the book. He began at the beginning, but after a few pages he suddenly stopped, and looked up at me. "Are you fond of reciting?" said he.

"No, I dislike it excessively."

"Read this carefully." And he pointed to a scrap from the Advocate which I had stuck in.

I read aloud from where his finger was: "'If a student takes an elective over and above the required number of hours, and does not specify which is the extra, he is allowed as many "cuts" a week as he has extra hours -' But, my dear sir, I knew that before."

He did not intend to listen to me, but said, "How many recitation hours are there in a week?"

"Why, four plus three are seven, seven times five is thirty-five, plus two is thirty-seven."

"Well, you'll be a Sophomore next year, won't you?"

"Yes."

"Elect forty-seven hours, and don't specify what are extra. Then you'll have thirty-seven cuts a week. Five dollars, please. I think we will have a very pleasant day. Good morning."

I have since had reason to suppose that I only saw the gentleman's clerk, but the advice is good enough to follow. But, O Lord, I hope the Advocate is not mistaken.

M. B.IN prehistoric ages,

When man clothed himself in skins,

And stone dippers and stone milking-pails

Were used instead of tins,

In the elevated mansions

Which in Alpine lakes are found,

There dwelt two ardent lovers

Who their plighted troth had bound.

Now the story of their trysting

And the consequence severe

Has been gathered from inscriptions

On an ancient stone-age bier,

And these entertaining relics

Give a valuable clew

To the tale of Hero's longing

For Leander stout and true.

'T was late one autumn evening,

(Pa and ma had gone to bed,

And the herds of tame rhinoceri

Were tethered in the shed)

When the hero of this story

Swam through stream and deep morass,

To prove his fond affection

For this prehistoric lass.

He asked her, as he landed,

If all were well at home,

And suggested as a pastime

Round the garden they might roam.

But when this toyish maiden

Said she must return erelong,

Like an igneous irruption

He poured forth his soul in song.

HE."In hammering stone saucepans

There's no delight for me,

In fishing for the trilobite

No pastime there can be;

My only joy in life

Is but to promenade with thee,

So come, sweet love, with me."

SHE."The savage pterodactyl

Is fluttering in the sky,

The iguanodon upon the sea

Is madly splashing by,

The mastodon with dreadful tusks

Is in the thicket nigh:

I dare not go with thee.

"But worse than these would be my pa,

If I should run away;

Mamma has always told me

Maidens at home must stay.

The woolly-haired rhinoceri

Would go unshorn each day

If I eloped with thee."

Disheartened by refusal

From this parent-bullied lass,

He stole a token from her lips

And plunged in the morass.

But as he neared the farther shore,

He gave a dying gasp,

And she saw him sink a victim

In the deinotherium's grasp.

This prehistoric maiden,

O'erwhelmed with woe and grief,

In the same amorphous mire

Sought death and a relief;

And thus she made an exit

From that gloomy age of stones,

And modern archaeologists

Discuss her fossil bones.

Let Schliemann dig for relics

In wind-infested Troy,

Or in the plain of Argos

Orestes' bones annoy;

Let Rawlinson or Mr. Smith

Chaldean tablets trace;

But give me the researches

In the prehistoric race.