Nothing brings more forcibly to the mind of the observer the truth of the adage "Necessity is the mother of invention," than a consideration of the petitions sent in to the faculty. They average several dozen a week and cover a multitude of ailments from "cold feet" to incipient consumption. The faculty in its analogous position of liberal thought and conservative action, seems inclined to give these documents the best interpretation possible, and, in so far as they depend upon diplomatic wording, and harrowing statement, they are successful. As to the latter point, it seems curious that, while the faculty is callous to excuses of over study, they yield at once to the blandishments of cell-wall degeneration of the lung.

The larger part of these petitions are, of course, for prayer cuts, the rest bearing on our system of voluntary attendance at recitations - voluntary if we feel like going. Whether or not it is right to offer these guileful petitions for our prayer cuts, and, as it were, to fight the devil with fire, we are not prepared to say. It is a social problem upon the solution of which we shall not enter until the marks are out in Ethics nineteen: but truly is not the cause and effect as plainly seen as in the Nihilism of Russia, or the Home Rulism in England? Coercion must be stopped, else the millenium never will be here.