The student, during a summer vacation, had devoted himself largely to the copying of Macaulay's essays, for, in his teens, one is much impressed by the rolling sentences of that great writer. Upon his return Harlson told of his summer not entirely wasted, and expressed the hope that he might have absorbed some trifle of the writer's style. The professor of English literature laughed. "Better have taken Carlyle's 'French Revolution' or any one of half a dozen books which might be named. Let me tell a little story. Some time ago a fellow professor of mine was shown by a Swedish servant girl in his employ a letter she had just written, with the request that he would correct it. He found nothing to correct. It was a wonderfully clear bit of epistolary literature. He was surprised, and questioned the girl. He learned that, though well educated, she knew but little English, and had sought the dictionary, revising her own letter by selecting the shortest words to express the idea. Hence the letter's strength and clearness. Stick to the Saxon closely. Macaulay will wear off in time." And this was better teaching than one sometimes gets in class. This is no tale of the inner life of an American university. It is but a brief summary of young Harlson's ways there. But some day, I hope, a Thomas Hughes will come who will write the story, which can be made as healthful as "Tom Brown," though it will have a different flavor. What a chance for character study! What opportunity for an Iliad of many a gallant struggle! Valuable only in a lesser degree than what is learned from books is what is learned from men in college, that is, from young men, and herein lies the greater merit of the greater place. In the little college, however high the grade of study, there is a lack of one thing broadening, a lack of acquaintance with the youth of many regions. The living together of a thousand hailing from Maine or California, or Oregon or Florida, or Canada or England, young men of the same general grade and having the same general object, is a great thing for them all. It obliterates the prejudice of locality, and gives to each the key-note of the region of another. It builds up an acquaintance among those who will be regulating a land's affairs from different vantage-grounds in years to come, and has its most practical utility in this. When men meet to nominate a President this fact comes out most strongly. The man from Texas makes a combination with the man from Michigan, and two delegations swing together, for have not these two men well known each other since the day their classes met in a rush upon the campus twenty years ago?