It is reported that a certain college has decided to make its students pay for any desks they may hereafter disfigure by cutting. This puts a summary end in one institution to what has been hitherto an almost universal custom. Somehow, these rude signs seem to be links between the students of different generations, and every one has felt a certain inherent right to carve his initials wherever he pleased, even though from motives of discretion he did it surreptitiously. Few indeed have been the books written on school life, in which the grey-beard did not point out to his awe stricken son the letters of his name, and with pride narrate how he put them there when a schoolboy himself. Few relics in the old schools and colleges are more highly prized than the names thus inscribed of those who in after years became famous.

But perhaps from a practical standpoint this custom is really objectionable. Formerly, when the entire college furniture was cheap and rough, this carving was a very different matter than it has become now when our buildings are fitted up in a comparatively handsome manner. Even the most partial would freely admit that the great majority of the names which are thus carved are not famous and probably never will be, while in waiting for the one famous man to arise from the ninety and nine common-place, a room is greatly disfigured by this indiscriminate cutting. It is hardly presumable that most men put their names into such publicity with any intention of some day showing them to their grandsons with "I did it, and now I am President!" or from any peculiar expectation, but rather from thoughtlessness. And on the whole we are inclined to think that any thoughtlessness which leads a man into the practice of whittling everything in his neighborhood is open to considerable objection; and so we would recommend that this practice be given up here and allowed to join its companions in the land of tradition.