An exchange which has just come to our office contains the following paragraph: - "The Harvard student has a passion for attending fires, as is pretty plainly shown by the fact that over 200 undergraduates turned out at mid-night, and ran a distance of more than two miles across country to witness the burning of the great ice houses at Fresh Pond." This statement is, in a measure, a true one. The Harvard student, as a rule, does display a great fondness for conflagrations, and his encouraging presence does much to promote the efficiency of the work done by the Cambridge fireman. Now this tendency to "run with the machine" may be accounted for in two ways. In the first place, it may be a relic of the student feeling which resulted in the formation of the old "Harvard Engine Company." This supposition has an air of probability from the fact that the chemical engine now used by the Cambridge firemen was a gift from the college to the city, - hence, the students feel that they are exercising a sort of proprietary right in accompanying it to fires. The second supposition, however, would seem to be the more probable, since it shows up in the light of self-interest this tendency to respond to alarms. Every student who rooms in the older dormitories in the yard knows that it is only a question of time when he may be compelled to rush for his life from his blazing building. He trains himself, therefore, for the inevitable crisis by getting out-of-doors as soon as possible at the sound of the alarm bells. Moreover, he does not allow his training to stop at this point, he rushes headlong to the actual scene of the conflagration, and there studies carefully and intelligently the methods employed in saving life and property, not knowing how soon he may be called upon in person to put them into operation. But, - and in all seriousness, - the undergraduates know perfectly well that there is constant danger of a terrible calamity by the burning of some of our tinderbox dormitories, and the fact that such a disaster is looked forward to by them was proved rather conclusively a few weeks ago, when an alarm, rung in from the box on Memorial Hall, emptied every building in the yard in less than two minutes, and sent half a thousand men to the point where the danger was indicated.