The most serious practical evil that will result from the elimination of the classics will fall upon the English language itself. The racial memory begins to decay, the racial imagination, the begetter of memory, begins to weaken, the sense of precise meanings begins to lose its edge, and the English language ceases to be a vital thing and becomes a mere code of arbitrary signals wigwagged from mouth to ear. Were I the emergency autocrat of this language, I should proclaim in drastic regulations and enforce by severe penalties the American duty of adherence to the old habits of speech, the old scrupulous respect for the finer shades of meaning, the old rigid observance of the morality of word relations; and this, I believe, can be done only by maintaining the classical culture at high potency. Mr. Mitchell was born in Maine in 1852, and was graduated from Bowdoin in 1871. It is curious to note, scanning the names of the editors and proprietors, how the _Sun_ has drawn upon New England. Benjamin H. Day was born in West Springfield, Massachusetts, April 10, 1810. Moses Yale Beach was born in Wallingford, Connecticut, January 7, 1800. Moses Sperry Beach was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, October 5, 1822. Charles A. Dana was born in Hinsdale, New Hampshire, August 8, 1819. Edward P. Mitchell was born in Bath, Maine, March 24, 1852. Frank A. Munsey was born in Mercer, Maine, August 21, 1854. Any grouping of _Sun_ men on the purely literary side brings the name of Hazeltine to stand with those of Dana and Mitchell. Mayo Williamson Hazeltine was a fine example of the scholar in newspaper work; an example of the way in which Dana, with his intellectual magnificence, found the best for his papers. Educated at Harvard and Oxford and in continental Europe, Hazeltine came to the _Sun_ in 1878, and was its literary critic until his death in 1909. During the same period he was also one of its principal writers of articles on foreign politics and sociology. His book-reviews, published in the _Sun_ on Sundays, which made the initials “M. W. H.” familiar to the whole English-reading world, were marvels of comprehension. Many a publisher of a three-volume historical work lamented when it attracted Hazeltine’s attention, for his review, whether two columns or seven, usually compressed into that space all that the average student cared to know about the book, reducing the high cost of reading from six or eight dollars to a nickel. Hazeltine enjoyed, under both Dana and Mitchell, practically his own choice of subjects, a free hand with them, and a generous income; and in return, for more than thirty years, he poured into the columns of the _Sun_ a wealth of the erudition which was his by right of education, travel, an intense interest in all things intellectual, and a wonderful memory.