To-day is the first Monday night of the college year. Ever since the founding of the University it has been considered by sophomore classes a fitting opportunity for initialing the freshmen in the mysteries of the new life before them. Of late, the old customs of a rush, a foot-ball game, or a tug-of-war, all of which had their days of supremacy at Harvard, have been superceded by a new and more civilized observance. It has now become the fashion for the members of the leading sophomore society to issue invitations to the freshmen who are considered likely to respond, requesting them to furnish "punch" on Monday night to the sophomore class. Many freshmen, new to' Harvard customs, know no better than to accept the invitation, and when they view their belongings on the following morning, their standard of Harvard life has been lowered materially, and they begin to wonder whether this well-worn saying is true, "No matter what else he may be, a Harvard man is always a gentleman."

It seems but natural that Harvard men should consider a rush or a rough-and-tumble foot-ball game a relic of barbarism, but it is inexplicable how men who have been in Cambridge a year can consider a public drinking bout as more desirous, more manly than these. Perhaps we see here again the indifference which has destroyed our prestige in athletic sports.

If the freshmen who are wise enough to learn through the experience of others will close their doors to-night, they will have learned none too early in their college life that their salvation at Harvard, as well as elsewhere, lies not in subservience, as some would try to make them believe, but in a quiet, dignified independence.