The religious tendencies of the American undergraduates are also reflected in their participation in the modern missionary crusades both at home and abroad. Twenty-five years ago the entire gifts of North American institutions for the support of missions in foreign lands was less than $10,000. Last year the students and alumni of Yale University alone gave $15,000 for the support of the Yale Mission in China, while $131,000 represented the gifts of North American colleges to the mission cause in other countries. The missionary interests of students on this continent are furthermore revealed in the fact that 11,838 men were studying modern missions in weekly student mission study classes during the college season of 1909-10. At Washington and Lee University there were more college men studying missions in 1910 than were doing so in the whole United States and Canada sixteen years ago. During the last ten years 4338 college graduates have gone to foreign lands from North America to give their lives in unselfish service to people less fortunate than themselves. Six hundred of these sailed in 1910 to fill positions in foreign mission ports in the Levant, India, China, Japan, Korea, Africa, Australia, and South America. THE BACCHIC ELEMENT Furthermore, the standards of morals and conduct among the American undergraduates are perceptibly higher than they were fifty years ago. There is a very real tendency in the line of doing away with such celebrations as have been connected with drinking and immoralities. To be sure, one will always find students who are often worse for their bacchic associations, and one must always keep in mind that the college is on earth and not in heaven; but a comparison of student customs to-day with those of fifty years ago gives cause for encouragement. Even in the early part of the nineteenth century we find conditions that did not reflect high honor upon the sobriety of students; for example, in the year 1814 we find Washington Irving and James K. Paulding depicting the usual sights about college inns in the poem entitled “The Lay of the Scottish Fiddle.” The following is an extract: Around the table’s verge was spread Full many a wine-bewildered head Of student learn’d, from Nassau Hall, Who, broken from scholastic thrall, Had set him down to drink outright Through all the livelong merry night, And sing as loud as he could bawl; Such is the custom of Nassau Hall. No Latin now or heathen Greek The senior’s double tongue can speak. Juniors from famed Pierian fount Had drank so deep they scarce could count The candles on the reeling table. While emulous freshmen, hardly able To drink, their stomachs were so full, Hiccuped, and took another pull, Right glad to see their merry host, Who never wine or wassail crost; They willed him join the merry throng And grace their revels with a song.