The last number of Harper's Weekly takes up the question of "practical joking" by collegians, and discusses it in a reasonable if not in an original manner. But we have to make the same objection that we made once before - the newspapers fail to make distinctions; and when Harper's Weekly classes the innocent extravaganza of the Harvard freshmen at Boston Music Hall in the same class with the recent kidnapping and hazing affairs at other colleges - then we claim that it shows lack of discrimination and of fairness. We entirely agree with that journal, however, when it says, "There should be an active public opinion in college, which, by condemning lawlessness and outrage as unmanly, would tend strongly to suppress them. Rioters within or without college walls must be dealt with by the courts, but it concerns every man who respects his college, to remember that it is a public misfortune to feed the prejudice against colleges as nurseries of disorder, extravagance, and dissipation." An editorial on the same subject in the current Frank Leslie's is too vile and violent to deserve an answer.
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