President White, of Cornell, has long been recognized as one of the foremost educators in this country. In an address, delivered some few days ago at the lying of the corner stone of a student society hall, he took occasion to make some statements, which, on that account, deserve attention. "The problem of housing students." he says especially in American universities, has long been a serious one. To coop them up in large dormitories or barracks, with possibly a tutor or young professor to act as policeman over them, has always been a fruitful cause of disorder. So fully is this recognized that, where it is possible, dormitories have been frequently done away with, and in every such case the improvement in college discipline has been immediate and striking." And on the other hand, although the system of allowing students to distribute themselves among private families in the town has great advantage, still it has many drawbacks, as, for instance, the scarcity of good accommodations, or the high price that will necessarily be charged. "Another evil both systems have in common. One of the most unfortunate things in college life hitherto has been the fact that students have considered themselves as practically something more than boys, and therefore not under tutors and governors, but something less than men, and therefore not amenable to the ordinary laws of society. Neither the dormitory nor the student's boarding-house is calculated to better this condition of things; for neither has any influence in developing the sense of manly responsibility in a student." While in our humble opinion, the picture of the evils of dormitory life is rather overdrawn so far as we can judge from such life here at Harvard, still, in the main we believe these statements are true.

Under this state of affairs it was but natural that some remedy should be sought. President White finds it in the student society hall, that sort of link between dormitory and boardinghouse. Such a house tends to take those who live in it out of the category of boys and place them in the category of men. "In such buildings as these, the student has a personal interest in his breeding; he is responsible for it, and instead of diminishing its value, he would add to it in more ways than one."

This whole idea is a new one and to a certain extent a possible one, but that it could ever become firmly fixed enough to radically change the method of housing students where large bodies of them are gathered together, hardly seems probable. And we fear that for a good many years to come, students will be forced to live in dormitories and boarding houses, and undergo the trials and tribulations of their forefathers.