A CONTRAST.

A correspondent of the Hartford Courant, whom rumor claims as a student of the annex, thus sermonizes concerning Harvard life:

"One does not hear so much about young men working through a course at college in this age of rapidly made fortunes. Neither does the student who considers a suite of luxuriously furnished rooms a necessity astonish the world by a brilliant record. What is the effect on the really and truly poor young man? It is no romance, but a stern reality, that requires a vast deal of moral courage and self-respect to enable him to hold on to his poverty and go through. Ten chances to one he will, if he does go through, come out ahead of the extravagant fellow. But he does not know it, and it is not the less hard for him to grapple with the economy that furnishes him with merely the necessities and none of the luxuries of life. A great deal is expected of the Harvard graduates, but great expectations are not always realized. Luxurious habits formed here will not help him when he comes to work his own way in the world, if he has that uphill business in his future. And no one will deny that, as a rule, men who rise in the world do so by the uphill road. As for the professors, men so learned as to inspire awe and reverence for so much knowledge, they do not look as if they had occupied luxurious suites of rooms in their college days. One room, with bare floor, a chair, table, and pegs in the wall for clothes, is more likely to have been their lodgings. How much time and money did they spend over aesthetic decorations and the extravagance of spreading themselves over a suite of three or four rooms, with soft rugs, easy-chairs, and all sorts of expensive things in the way of bric-a-brac, collected at home and abroad?

Some of the professors are as fashionably clad as a farmer who has never even seen a city-cut garment. Professor - passed my window this morning, taking a walk, for he did not learn the antics of the gymnasium in his college days, and still holds to the old-time constitutional in the open air. He dresses so plainly, and with so little regard to modern style, that he looks positively quaint. Another equally learned professor, whom I met the other day, dresses also very plainly and unfashionably. Their manners are so unaffected and simple, with all their learning, and not in the least like the 'airs' of the students they teach. The freshmen have the grandest airs, and are the busiest boys in college. They are always overwhelmed with 'positive engagements,' and they 'have but a moment to stay, you know,' when they make calls. One cannot imagine these charming, simplemannered, unfashionably-dressed professors ever having been 'airy' young freshmen; and it is just as impossible to fancy these young students ever growing large enough to become charming, simple-mannered professors, wearing old-fashioned clothes."