Disorder is different from vice. The latter, the doing of things wrong in themselves or made wrong by force of opinion, shuns observation: the former courts it. The disorderly act is in many instances harmless enough in itself, and the evil lies in doing it in an improper place and at an improper time. Hence it is that good students, who would scorn to stoop to vice, so often suffer themselves to be led to the commission of an act of disorder. We may even go to the extent of admitting that occasionally college disorder is not without a certain color of reason. It is the youthful way of resenting a real or an imaginary grievance. When a class discovers that it or some of its members have been treated too severely, according to its standard, by a certain professor, what more natural than to create a disturbance in the recitation-room or in public? In itself considered, the act is a youthful ebullition, and we might be tempted at first to look upon it as something venial and pass it by in silence. Reflection, however, should lead us to the opposite conclusion. There is nothing that a college faculty cannot afford to pardon sooner than disorder. The reason is almost self-evident. There is nothing that ruins so effectually the general tone of the college and demoralizes all the students, good and bad. Vice moves in rather narrow circles--much more narrow than those in authority are apt to perceive. It does not affect the great body of students, who are filled with robust life, and whose very faults are conceits and extravagances rather than misdeeds. But disorder spreads from one to another: originating with the morally perverse, it gathers sufficient volume and momentum to overpower at times even the very best. To protect the better class of students, then, were there no other reason, the faculty is bound to interfere energetically and in season. Its position is not unlike that of the commander of a regiment. The colonel will not unfrequently wink at a certain amount of dissipation among the officers, and even among the privates. He may say to himself that the offence is one hard to prove, that perhaps it will wear itself out in time, that perhaps it is best not to draw the reigns too tightly. But no commanding officer can afford to tolerate for an instant the slightest movement of insubordination. He must put it down on the spot, without regard to consequences, and without stopping to inquire into abstract questions of right and wrong. No one, of course, will assert that the head of a college is to act according to the military code. The differences between soldier life and college life are fundamental. Yet there are certain resemblances which prompt and justify the wish that a touch at least of the military spirit might be infused into our colleges. The spirit, be it carefully observed, and not the forms, for the incompatibility between the military and the literary-scientific methods has been demonstrated repeatedly, the most recent evidence