by nature a modest creature. The last of whom we have to tell is the writer of these idle words. His name is Harlequin, and if in some wild caper the mask of invisibility slips from its place, and you see his face and know him, tell him so. It will please and surprise him—not because you have discovered his personality through his words, but because you have read these trivial pages at all.

HARLEQUIN.

Colonel Roosevelt's great adventure in the Brazilian wilderness is attracting a great deal of advance notice. His first article, which describes the starting out of this expedition, will appear in the April issue of SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE. It is said that the Colonel has never written so interestingly or shown to such good advantage his wonderful versatility as in this new series.

In order that those who want to subscribe now may have the Magazine for the full year, the publishers of SCRIBNER'S offer to send to those who subscribe within one month from April, 1914, the first three issues of this year, without extra charge.

Subscription price, $3.00 a year.

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

597 FIFTH AVENUE

NEW YORK

THE Anglo-Saxon has always taken pride in a certain innate

taciturnity. From time immemorial one of the essential attributes of his real hero has been a curious unwillingness to speak for himself, as though his power of action limited in some mysterious way his power of speech. From the knight who, though never conversationally at loss with maid or dragon, usually let the bulk of the light discourse fall upon a fool or some ecstatic gentleman of Latin extraction, down to our Pilgrim fathers this inborn tendency has increased. The pioneer, kindly, but almost painfully speechless save on rare occasions, the preoccupied soldier, the plainsman, that odd creature of laconic tongue and vivid imagination, have all furthered it. And finally, nowadays there has come to be a sort of premium on silence, a premium originating in the commercialism of our nation. We tend toward being instructed to talk too little. Our "captains of industry" are just now very much watched, very much followed. They have learned to give few commands, and to rely on personal action as less liable to the vicissitudes of unstable legislation. But what we do hear from them, or what purports to be the

sentiment of the "moneyed interests," takes form in a more or less definite statement that if business is to be business and well conducted, a man is a fraud until he has proven himself otherwise. Undoubtedly business is business; the conclusion is obvious. Thus in our youthful days we learn to maintain a certain reserve, as it were, by nature.

When we come to college this tendency first becomes strongly apparent. To many men it is a matter of wonder that cliques form so oddly and yet so surely. The very man who is puzzled by their existence is probably more or less unconsciously a member of one, though if asked, he is either honestly unwitting of his position or refuses to admit it. There are many reasons, or, perhaps we should say, subreasons for this, but the primary one is that we are most of us Anglo-Saxons, and those who are not naturally follow the general custom. Matters that lie very close to our hearts, pet whims, foibles, and theories we will not, and often can not, mention through sheer diffidence. It is this that is at the basis of the clique tendency, this which causes the general trend of conversation outside of a man's intimate circle to be more than slightly trivial.

Now and then, however, with the appearance of a really serious public problem before the college body, discussions so excellent arise that it is evidently high time to question the advisability of confining our deeper thoughts to any one limited group and even the right of so doing. Of course, no one could urge familiarity in personal matters. They are akin to family affairs. But as a family taking no community interest is of little worth to society, so one who keeps his ideas and fancies to a small coterie of friends and restricts his general conversation to the ordinary commonplaces of the time deprives himself and his fellows of much that might prove of great benefit. We do not begin to realize how much sound thought never gets abroad, but is irredeemably lost through our racial inclination.

In this we would relate ourselves to our whole past history. As a matter of fact, we can here in college ally ourselves with a single period only. The aloofness we so commend in our forefathers was the result of a natural outgrowth. The AngloSaxon was, more than any other, the stock that definitely laid

open newly-found lands. One naturally likes to keep what he finds, and in the primitive community nothing but silence insures a man's property against adventurous marauders. But once, before the exploitation of lands of wonder from the Bahamas to Cathay had really begun, our forbears, through sheer proximity and lack of attractive internicine warfare, were forced to devote their energies to talk. Hence arose an age in literature and discourse such as the world has not since

seen.

To this period is our college life comparable. We are thrown closely together, and nothing but an erroneous tendency to reserve keeps us from many an interesting debate. Are we not much as our fathers were when the fame of Stratford was new, and a host of brilliant minds were following the lead of Ben? Yet, having been taught for years to revere men of silence, we now must needs, in these our youthful days, ape them as though our case in life were precisely theirs. Here in the shadows of libraries and laboratories, in the classroom and on the Campus we, forsooth, would conduct ourselves as though we, too, were conquering nations; as though the fortunes of the world were upon us; as though new lands spread virgin before our feet.

Our vision is distorted. At some future time we may earnestly hope to have such opportunities open to us. Now it is our office to prepare for them. Our nations, our unknown continents, our worlds are at hand, bound between the covers of books. But how foolish the man who thinks himself able unaided to absorb the vast wisdom of this multitude of volumes. So great is the supply that it is well nigh impossible to tread even upon the borders of their learning and avoid being narrow. Only by the coördinated effort of many can so huge a thing be even faintly comprehended. How then shall we be educated men?

In the last few years the answer to this has slowly become visible. We must lay aside reserve and turn back to that golden age of discourse to which we are rightly related. It is well that our life here should be, in many details, a replica of what we shall meet in the future. But let us not bring the brooding silence that our present-day commercial world has

learned by harsh experience into the world of the Campus. Let us retain freedom of mind. In the rooms about us are hundreds of men of diversified interests and talents unnumbered. This whole miniature world is ours, and from it we may select an infinity of aids to uphold us in that outer world where we are measured in life size.

Let us, then, abandon silence while we may. In Rome we are like to be forced to do as the Romans, and the reticence of our business nation is reaching out to overwhelm us. Most must fall victim of it at last, but let us, until that day come, banish it beyond the bounds of our collegiate commonwealth. Here are not the exigencies of that later life; in this respect our residence here bears no relation to what awaits us. Evenings are as long as those the Elizabethans knew. Let us no longer withhold our fancies. Let us talk of whatever interests any one of us, from Homer to Masefield, from Orpheus to Wagner, from Plato to O. Henry, from Archimedes to slide valves, from Chaos to Eternity. Somewhere nearby, perhaps at our elbow at this instant, is a man who on some topic can add wealth to our fancy, can tell us what, alone, we could never have learned. Let us take him aside and ask him of that matter. Fear not that we force him to altruism. Beyond a doubt there are subjects that have always puzzled him upon which we can cast a light in return for his courtesy to us. Let us try, by all means. For if we succeed, as succeed we shall, we shall go forth broader men than we could ever be, though infinitely brilliant, by narrow, unswerving adherence to the instinct of the Anglo-Saxon.

J. Carlisle Peet.