materials, but no such fault can be found with his later stories, such as Grit of Women and The God of His Fathers, which recently appeared in McClure's Magazine. The narrative in these is direct and telling, the action swift and inevitable. Altogether Jack London may be safely counted one of the best short-story writers that we have today, and judging from his rapid improvement, it is not unreasonable to hope for even better work from him in the future.

(To receive further notice in a later number.)

L. W.

Books Received.

"QUICKSAND." By Hervey White. Boston: Small, Maynard and Company. "THE STAGE IN AMERICA, 1897-1900." By Norman Hapgood. New York: The Macmillan Company.

"RALPH WALDO EMERSON." By Frank B. Sanborn. The Beacon Biographies. Boston: Small, Maynard and Company.

"THE SHADOWY WATERS." By W. B. Yeats. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company.

"THE CRISIS." By Winston Churchill. New York: The Macmillan Company.

"OUR FRIEND THE CHARLATAN." A Novel. By George Gissing. New York: Henry Holt and Company.

"SISTER THERESA." By George Moore.

Company.

Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott

"THE DIARY OF A FRESHMAN." By Charles Macomb Flandrau. New York:

Doubleday, Page and Company.

"THE GLASS OF TIME." By Charlotte Becker. Chicago: The Blue Sky

Press.

I have long been disposed to ask the younger members of the University to consider the matter of the annual rumpus in the College Yard on the night of the first Monday in term time. I am moved to do this now for the reason that in the last of these disturbances one of the young men in the Scientific School, an able-bodied fellow, had his life put in peril by damage done to his heart by the squeezing to which his chest was subjected in one of the rushes. It was but a chance that the harm was not more serious than it happily proved to be.

I have seen something of these Monday night performances for more than forty years. The first I recall was in 1859, when the contest took place on the Delta, and purported to be a football match between the Sophomore and Freshman classes, the Juniors aiding the new-comers and the Seniors supporting the class that had been in a year. A ball was put in play at the beginning, but all pretense of a game was quickly abandoned, and in its place there was a Donnebrook fair fight. I remember seeing the ball on one side of the ground where it had apparently been forgotten by the combatants. In course of time all semblance of a game on the Delta was abandoned and in its place the rushes in the College Yard were instituted. This relatively modern mode of trying the strength of the classes is more objectionable than the ancient, for the reason that it is even more unorganized, and because the classes are four times as large as they were in

the middle of the last century, so that the power brought to bear by the surging masses is greater. Moreover, the men engaged are older and stronger than the students of half a century ago. It is evident that in these performances we each year risk the loss of valuable men; and, what is of even more moment, we each year strain many in a way to injure their usefulness, in some instances permanently.

In talking this matter over with students, I have been asked whether like or even greater risks are not met in football, polo, etc., and whether I would do away with those sports because of the dangers to which they subject life and limb. This is a fair question, and in answering it the case against the "Bloody Monday" business may be clearly set forth. We shall see that it brings the question of a man's responsibility for his life and limbs, to himself and his fellow-men clearly before us.

If there is any supremely important conclusion to be derived from our modern knowledge as to the nature of man, it is that each of us holds in trust a vast store of inheritances which have come to him from innumerable ancestors. That a man is here means that those who have been before him have handed on to him their capacities of mind and body,-capacities which have been transmitted because they were well-husbanded by his predecessors and wisely applied. This sense of responsibility by our birthright has been evident in many moralists of the old dispensation, but it is only in our own day, and with our modern knowledge of what inheritance means, that its full significance has again to be appreciated. He who sees himself in the light of modern science, if there be the sense of duty in him, must feel the noble burthen of this trust that age has laid upon him.

What, then, it may be asked, are we to do with this burthen that the new learning has laid upon us? Shall we set about guarding this heritage in the way that men have not done before, taking no risks, saving our blessed lives as long as we may? To that the learning affords a full answer, in effect that, while this heritage of life and power is more precious than men of earlier times recognized, it is for spending in any way that duty and reason justify. It but adds to the old obligation to see that the end to be