Not only upon the shields of our American universities do we find “veritas”; in spirit at least it is also clearly written across the face of the entire college life of our times. Gentlemanliness, open-mindedness, originality, honor, patriotism, truth--these are increasingly found in both the serious pursuits and the play life of our American undergraduates. The department in which these ideals are sought is not so important as the certainty that the student is forming such ideals of thoroughness and perfection. This search for truth and reality may bring to our undergraduates unrest or doubt or arduous toil. They may search for their answer in the lecture-room, on the parade-ground, in the hurlyburly of college comradeships, in the competitive life of college contests, or even in the hard, self-effacing labors of the student who works his way through college. While, indeed, it may seem to many that the highest wisdom and the finest culture still linger, one must believe that the main tendencies in the life of American undergraduates are toward the discovery of and devotion to the highest truth--the truth of nature and the truth of God. II EDUCATION À LA CARTE “If I were to return to college, I should take nothing that was practical,” remarked a recent college graduate. This attitude reveals by contrast a somewhat wide-spread tendency of opinion toward practical and progressive studies. At a public gathering not long since, the president of a great State institution in the Middle West said that he believed within another decade every course in the institution of which he was the head would be intended simply to fit men to earn a livelihood. A cultivated disciple of quiet and delightful studies who overheard this remark was heard to say almost in a groan, “If I thought that was true of American education generally, I should want to die.” An even more significant note of warning against merely bread-and-butter studies comes from Amherst College, where the class of 1885 recently presented to the governing board the radical plan of abolishing entirely the degree of bachelor of science, with the purpose of building up a strictly classical course for a limited number of students admitted to college only by competitive examinations. The plan provides for the raising of a fund to meet any deficiency caused by the temporary loss of students and also for the increase of teachers’ salaries. The general idea in the mind of the Amherst committee is expressed as follows: