EDITORS DAILY CRIMSON: - I see by your paper of yesterday that the old bugbear "too much work in History 13" has made its periodical appearance. It seems that a number of the hard-worked students are trying to get block-reading substitutes for the reference system now in use, which has been perfected by the instructors at a great expense of time and labor. It no doubt is much easier to lounge in an easy chair and read a book or two in connection with a certain course than to sit at a desk in the library or in your own room and learn from consultation with a number of writers what the real ethics of a question is. One is reading and the other is work. Hence the unpopularity of the latter system in use in History 13, is paramountly a good one. A knowledge of the writers and books that are of any value to the student of American history is gained as it could be in no other way, and this attempt to destroy so good a plan of conducting a course shows, let us hope, more ignorance than laziness. Those who believe that History 13 requires more work than other full courses, must have formerly spent the time they now grudge putting on History 13, in pursueing the college catalogue in search of "snaps." And right here, it would be well to take a glance at the whole History department. In most of the courses the system of collateral reading is in vogue and with what result! The knowledge gained from such reading has a certain delicious flavor of uncertainty that shows only too well how desultory such a process of work is. In History 13, however, the instructor has given us a system whereby we can get at the sense of the question without being compelled to wade through pages of unimportant or irrelevant matter. It would entail a large amount of work upon the instructor but there would be a great saving of labor, and a more concise and philosophical knowledge of history among Harvard men, if the very much desired system of History 13 could become universal in our history courses. If the men in History 13 prefer the other method, it will be only their own loss if they succeed in their present attempt. It can hardly be believed, however, that the instructor will change a good system for a bad one, simply because his students do not perceive the advantages of the present plan.

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