ABOUT a year ago the seats on Jarvis Field were taken down, in accordance with a vote of the Corporation, and all athletic associations were at the same time forbidden to sell tickets to any matches or sports which might take place upon the field. It was of course necessary to dispose of the seats at once, and the Base-Ball Club, to which they belonged, was obliged to part with them for $25, - less than a quarter, if we are not mistaken, of their original cost.

When a College Nine comes to Cambridge to play with our own, it is of course necessary to pay their expenses and to entertain them as well as possible. In the old days of gate-money, this was not a difficult task; but the Base-Ball Club, now that its income is entirely confined to subscriptions, finds great difficulty in meeting its expenses. It is, in fact, in debt.

To give a notion of the expenses of the Club, we will quote from a letter recently sent us by one of its members. Subscribers of course expect seats, and it is necessary to erect them temporarily for each match. The person who bought the seats last year finds it impossible to erect them for a single day at a smaller price than $75, - three times what he gave for them. To prevent non-subscribers from occupying the seats, it has been found necessary to rope in a portion of the field, and to hire police-officers to guard it against intruders. The result is that the game with Brown on Saturday involved the following expenses:-

Putting up seats, . . . $75.00

Expenses of visiting club, . . 30.00

Rope, . . . . . 14.00

Four policemen, at $2, . . . 8.00

Man (1/2 day) for repairing grounds, . 1.00

Flour, etc., . . . . 1.50

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Total, . . . . $129.50

Amount received from subscriptions, . . 50.00

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Deficit, . . . . . . $79.50

The boating interests absorb nearly all the money that can be raised by subscription, and the students have discovered that, after all, non-subscribers can contrive to slip into the seats; so they are naturally disinclined to pay in advance for a seat which they not only may not wish to use, but which they might obtain without paying.

There is probably not a single student who, if he desired to see a game, would be unwilling to pay fifty cents on the spot. Receiving immediate returns for his expenditure, he would appreciate its full value. And if the Base-Ball Nine and the Athletic Association were allowed, when anything of interest was going on, to charge a fee for the use of seats, and if the seats were allowed to remain on the field during term time, - being taken down at the end of the college year, - our sporting interests would be far more prosperous, and subscription lists would cease to be the bane of college life.

The chief objection to the preservation of the seats appears to be that they are a favorite evening resort for questionable characters, whose noisy behavior disturbs the residents of the neighborhood. The employment of a single watchman would put an end to this, and his wages would be a less serious drain upon the treasury of the Nine than the $ 75 which must now be paid to a monopolist whenever a match is played.