It is the custom of old mother Advocate to don her best literary bib and tucker when she comes before the public for the first time in the year and her appearance day before yesterday is no exception to the rule. The first number of the year is on the whole, above the average of the Advocate Issues, although there are no striking productions.

Perhaps the most original bit of prose in the number is "A Plea for the Higher Education of Apparitions." In it there are several bright ideas and humorous turns of thought, the slight plot of the whole hinging on the ignorance which a spirit-visitor displays in not knowing the difference in time between London and New York.

"The Iron Fountain" is a well told story, a simple legend of Antwerp which has woven itself about a small iron fountain which the present visitor may see. "In the Moonlight," by the same author, is a graceful account of an Indian legend.

"A Harvard Trio" and "Through the Register" are more conventional in their plots and treatment, the former appearing to be the best of the two in that it contains excellent delineations of three familiar types of Harvard character, although it is to be doubted whether the moral inculcated at the end would hold good in every case.

Of "College Kodaks," the second and fourth are the best, the former being the brighter of the two. It would have been better, perhaps, for mother Advocate's reputation as a teller of stories had she omitted the fifth Kodak, - a Travers story that has been for some of us coeval with Mother Goose.

Of the verse of the number, "An awakening" is the best, although it lacks any great originality, and the first line naturally suggests the opening verse of one of Wordsworth's best known poems. "To Isabel" is more replete with words than with thought. "In Exile" is a pleasureable triolet.