But the condition of college journalism at present does not confer high honor on the American undergraduate or on American colleges. When we look beyond the college daily, we find literary periodicals nearly at a standstill as to funds and ideas. In the Middle West especially, the editors of literary journals spend a good part of their time in drumming up delinquent subscribers. The principal activity manifested by many a college literary magazine is to start and to stop. They resemble the ephemeral Edinburgh university magazine, described by Robert Louis Stevenson: “It ran four months in undisturbed obscurity and died without a gasp.” To the modern era of literary productiveness the college man, at least while in college, seems to be a comparatively small contributor. The best men are needed to make college journalism popular, for deep within most students’ hearts is a love for real literature; as one student said recently, “Many a man is found reading classic literature on the sly.” It may seem to an outsider that the student usually prefers his heroes to be visible and practical, jumping and fighting about on the athletic field, much as certain persons prefer to hear a big orchestra, the players in which can be seen sawing and blowing and perspiring, rather than to listen to mysterious, sweet, but unseen music. Some day strong college leaders will rise up to champion college journalism and college reading as to-day they fight for athletics. Then college sentiment will make popular the pen and the book. When book-life is as popular as play-life, college conversation will have new point; the fraternity man will be able to spend an hour away from the “fellows” and the rag-time piano, and the docile professor, starting out reluctantly to visit his students, will not need to pray “Make me a child again just for to-night!” as he immolates himself for a long, dreary evening trying to smile and talk wisely of college politics and base-ball averages. A NEW REALISM IN LITERATURE How is the undergraduate to be interested in writing? How can college journalism be made to take a real hold on the undergraduate’s life? One might answer, present literature and writing in an interesting manner, bring out the humanity in it; for, above all, the undergraduate is intensely human. New college ideals and interests have been born, and have grown up in a new age of literary aspiration and method. The times demand literature instinct with human interest, vital with reality. We may quarrel with the type; we may call it vulgar and yellow and thin and realistic, but the fact remains that it is the literary temper of the day; and there are those whose opinions are worthy of consideration who believe that this new realism in literature is by no means to be treated lightly, even in comparison with the poetic and stately form of Elizabethan letters. BOOKS AND THE UNDERGRADUATE