EDITORIAL boards are retiring about this time. In nearly every paper we have taken up, the exchange column began, "We dip our pen in gall for the last time." This seems to be a universal formula, though what it means it is impossible to say. No black ink at present manufactured can be used without "dipping your pen in gall," and unless you are always going to write with a pencil in the future, it scarcely seems necessary to mention that you use black ink.

After this little introduction, they all go on to smile upon those who have smiled on them, or to pour floods of weak sarcasm-and-water on the head of the Niagara Index. In spite of the general weak-mindedness of exchange editors, - a misfortume which is probably the result of having to read the college papers once in two weeks, - "collegiate journalism" has improved a great deal in the last two or three years. A few papers are silly, a good many are heavy, pretentious, or stupid, but there are only one or two left absurd enough to find subjects for laughter in, and the advancing march of common-sense will soon leave these behind. However, it is only about twice a year that one meets with anything in a college paper that would be thought worth reading if it appeared in an outside journal.

There is a romantic and highly probable tale in the Columbia Spectator about a bicyclist who, meeting a young woman running away from home to be married, put her on the steps of his machine, and raced with her father and a fast horse for six miles, and beat. The Acta, usually the best of our exchanges, has nothing of any interest this week, except another romantic and extremely slangy story, "A Land Cruise," which has run through several numbers, and promises to go on indefinitely.

The Record says, "There is a rumor that Harvard has a professional coach." The rumor, we thought, was the other way, though happily it turned out unfounded.

The Chronicie has some amusingly bad verses. The poetical editor should have looked at them a little more carefully. It is too late in the century to scan beach and fiend as two syllables each.

Prof. in Veterinary Science. - Mr. S., to what class of animals does the horse belong? Mr. S. - I think, Professor, it belongs to the Sophomore Class. - Era.

HORACE, Od. IX., Bk. I. Freshman Class. Vides ut alta stet nive candidum Soracte, "See how deep Socrates stands in the white snow!" - Mercury.