IT seems appropriate to remind the present Seniors of their responsibility in the matter of voluntary recitations. Voluntary recitations must be regarded as still on trial, as they have not yet received the formal and permanent sanction of the authorities, and when it is remembered that this the second year of the trial will be held peculiarly decisive, it becomes the obvious duty of Seniors to avail themselves but sparingly of the privilege of cutting. Like the orator who spoke not to his audience but to posterity, the Seniors should feel the gravity of their position. It rests in great part with them to assure the continuance of the institution, and we trust it is only necessary to mention the matter.

A caution is hardly necessary as to the extreme rapidity with which absences sum up when there is a confirmed habit of cutting uninteresting recitations on small provocation, and yet, probably, these swell the black list to a large extent. The apparent fallacy in the position is the exhorting of students to keep up an artificial state of attendance on recitations, while the experiment looks to ascertain the real disposition of students with regard to the matter. This, however, disappears when we remember that the test which the authorities are agreed to apply is an arbitrary and perhaps inadequate one, namely, the number of absences in the course of the year.

Whatever a Senior may think as to the little benefit he is likely to receive from a certain recitation, or whatever his theory of voluntary recitations by which he may regard the average attendance as in no sense indicative of the success of the plan, he is bound to remember that the authorities, having no other obvious criterion, have decided that attendance is to be held the proof and guaranty of the system.