One of the most encouraging signs for the progress of this University is the growing use of the Library. It may be well enough to show that we have more students than any other college, that we have the ablest professors, the finest museums, and the largest library; but if we do not employ these advantages, our boast is vain. We have all heard time and time again of the slight mental strength gained, by passively taking our facts and ideas through the handy medium of a lecture. As far as real drill goes, listening to lectures affects our minds about as watching other men pull chest weights affects our bodies. As the office of the director of the gymnasium is to show us the apparatus which is for our own use, so the duty of our professors is to stimulate and guide the work which we must do for our selves, to show us our apparatus; and when we consider this apparatus which the college provides for our mental exercise, the library stands first - if indeed it be granted that the aim of a liberal education is to get a basis for culture, to learn how we may most surely get at "the best which has been thought and said in the world." For books are the repositories of this wisdom of the past; they are the keys to the treasure-houses of thought. Consequently, when we learn that now eighty-five per cent. of the students use the library, instead of the fifty-seven per cent. of ten years ago, we can believe that the college is accomplishing its end better than ever before.