Such a measure of relief will not make all the crofters contented and prosperous. It will, however, give them security against being turned out of their homes and against excessively high rents, and will encourage them to spend their labor and money in improving their holdings. If some assistance could be given to those who may wish to emigrate from overcrowded districts, and if the government would make liberal advances of money to promote the fishing industry, the prospect that the discontent and destitution would disappear would be much better. The relief proposed will, however, be thankfully received by many of the crofters and their friends. DAVID BENNETT KING. MY FRIEND GEORGE RANDALL. Since his own days at the university George Randall had always had a friend or two among the students who came after him. I remember how in my Freshman year I used to see Tom Wayward going up the stairs in the Academy of Music building to his office, and how I used to envy Billy Wylde when I met him arm in arm with George on one of the campus malls. It was occasionally whispered about that Randall's influence on these young men was not of the very best, and that he used to have a never-empty bottle of remarkably smooth whiskey in his closet, along with old letter-files and brief-books; and it is undoubtedly true that Perry Tomson and I used to consider George's friends as models in the manner of smoking a pipe, or ordering whiskey-and-soda at Bertrand's to give us an appetite for our mutton-chops or our _bifteck aux pommes_, and in the delightful self-sufficiency with which in the pleasant spring days they would cut recitations and loll on the grass smoking cigarettes right under the nose, almost, of the professor. But they are both married now, and settled down to respectable conventional success; and Billy Wylde, as I happen to know, has repaid the money which George lent him wherewith to finish his education in Germany. The estimable matrons of Lincoln who made so much ado over George's ruining these young men,--who had such bright intellects and might have been expected to do something but for that dreadfully well read lawyer's awful influence,--these women do not consider it worth their while now, in the face of the facts as they have turned out, to remember their predictions, but confine themselves to making their dismal prophecies anew in regard to the three young fellows whom George has of late taken up. But then I remember how they went on about Perry Tomson and me in the early part of our Junior year, when we began to enjoy the favor of George's friendship; and if their miserable croaking never does any good, I fancy it will never work any very great harm: so one might as well let them croak in peace. In fact, one would more easily dam the waters of Niagara than stop them, and George, I know, doesn't care the cork of an empty beer-bottle what they say of him.