Higher education does not require that college discipline, direction and supervision should be abated; on the contrary, it demands more active exercise of all these functions. Some quite good and earnest men go to college only to read; their proper place is a large library in a city. Others, taking advantage of “elective” studies, want to plunge into a groove and remain there. Elective studies have their advantages, but young men are seldom fit to select for themselves. Says President Bartlett, of Dartmouth: “From the fact that he has not been over the field, the youth is incompetent to judge what is the best drill and culture for him. And while diversity of ultimate aim may modify the latter part of the basal education, specialism comes soon enough when the special training begins. And those institutions seem to me wisest which reserve their electives till the last half of the college course, then introduce them sparingly, and not miscellaneously, but by coherent courses. A general and predominant introduction of electives is fruitful of evils. It perplexes the faithful student in his inexperience. It tempts and helps the average student to turn away from the studies which by reason of his deficiencies he most needs. It gives opportunity to the lazy student to indulge his indolence in the selection of ‘soft’ electives.” Fortunately discipline is not so hard to maintain in American colleges as in European universities. There are some “hard boys” at Harvard, and the Yale Cubs often make night hideous at New Haven, nevertheless the American student is generally more respectable and law-abiding than his foreign brother. Says President Eliot, of Harvard: “The habitual abstinence from alcohol as a daily beverage, which the great majority of American students observe, explains in some degree the absence in American institutions of all measures to prevent students from passing the night away from their college rooms or lodgings. The college halls at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton stand open all night; while at Oxford and Cambridge locked doors and gates, and barred and shuttered windows, enforce the student’s presence in his room after 10 P.M., but are most ineffectual to restrain him from any vice to which he may be seriously inclined. There is more drunkenness and licentiousness at Oxford and Cambridge than among an equal number of American students; but this fact is due rather to national temperament, and to the characteristics of the social class to which English students generally belong, than to anything in university organization or discipline. Among manly virtues, purity and temperance have a lower place in English estimation than in American.”