Our instructors are the village men who

"Sheared and reaped in peace and quietness,

Unknowing envy's pangs or war's distress."

We, the undergraduates, are the children who sport with merry gambols on the green. And that thing, once frail but now a huge monster which may at any moment devour us all, is the hour-examination system. We all remember the first adoption of this system; how innocent the idea seemed when first presented to us, with what care it was nursed into stronger life. Did we not honor and bow down before it, and look to it for unnumbered blessings? Then it was a small and tender thing, but now it has grown, - ye gods, how it has grown! The plan as first broached had a pleasant sound in one's ears, and so long as we had but one or two examinations in a week, we cheerfully submitted for the sake of the good they did us. But now that things have come to such a pass that we find ourselves confronted every four weeks or so with three, four, five, or more examinations crowded into one week, it would seem that the pretty cub has already developed into a monster whose insatiable appetite threatens us all with destruction. With prophetic foresight I contemplate in horror the consequences of its continuance among us; I see a time, not far off, when the boldest student will have fled; when these fair halls will be the home of desolation, and the recitation-rooms of University know no occupants but the ghosts of the dead. And what of those who reared the beast that shall have undone us? Will the analogy be completed? I see - But no! here the curtain must be drawn; there are scenes which even the undergraduate cannot look upon unmoved.

Is there then no remedy for these evils? I think there is. The hour examinations are too valuable to be given up, but why should they not be so arranged as to secure us from having more than two in one week, or if that should be impossible, why should not recitations be suspended while the examinations prevail?

I know that some believe that the object of these examinations is to obtain from the students thorough daily work, and that they ought not to study up for them. Against the end proposed I have nothing to say, - it is what is needed here above all things, - but that it will ever be attained by such examinations as these I most decidedly do not believe. As long as examinations are announced beforehand, just so long will men, if for no other reason, because they know that other men will read up for them, and fear to be ranked lower than they deserve, study up their back work.

The annoyance and distraction consequent on trying to study for several examinations while also preparing several recitations a day in other studies are very great; and if this is true of real one-hour examinations, much more must it be true when they are so arranged as to amount to two hours in length, and are of an inquisitorial severity suggestive of the annuals.

I see no good reason why the actual state of things should not be accepted, and that freedom from recitations granted, which otherwise will, however much to our detriment, be taken.

W. H. T.