The board of overseers at their last meeting requested the committee on government to "consider and report promplly on the advisability of making attendance upon recitations and lectures compulsory." This action shows plainly that either the overseers fail to understand the way in which attendance at recitations is regulated by the present system, or else labor under the delusion that in such a rule as they propose lies the only way of making students appear regularly at recitations. In the first place, at the present time the instructor is the judge as to whether or not a student comes to recitations regularly enough to warrant his remaining in the course, and if a warning proves insufficient, the student is dropped from the course. This method is as simple as it is effective. Cases will always arise when it is impossible for a student to be at a certain lecture, and if the compulsory rule were enforced, continual explanations would be necessary, wearisome both to the student and the instructor, The old doctrine that compulsion is the only means of bring about perfect attendance at lectures has been tried and has been found wanting-let the obslete theory rest in its grave. The present method seems ta satisfy the parties most interested in its success-why not leave it alone? The further recommendation of "making attendance at daily prayers, or at roll call, for those who do not wish to attend prayers, compulsory," is a relic of the illiberal spirit which was already on the wane twenty years ago; a spirit which it would ill become a university like Harvard to adopt.