Although the college jester may have applied Motley's phrase, "a sheet of infinite platitude," to some of the recent numbers of the Advocate,-and what magazine does not have its gay and its dull days?- certain it is that good old mother Advocate has succeeded in hammering several "golden grains of wit" into the issue of her estimable paper which appears today. It is one of the best of the numbers of this year.

By far the most meritorious articles are the two stories, "A Mutual Fraud" and "After Twenty Years." The former is a clever tale of the trouble-beset course of true love, the love of one Alphonse for his Henrietta. The raconteur is a charming little blackeyed French woman with a penchant for English slang and flirting-and the result is a delicate piquancy and delightful vivaciousness of style which is seldom characteristic of Advocate stories. There are one or two slight errors in the use of words, but the plot is original, and the story, on the whole, is very creditable to its author.

"After Twenty Years" stands in marked contrast to a "A Mutual Fraud" as regards character and treatment. It is a story reminding one of Hawthorne in its general simplicity and in certain descriptive touches. The plot of the story is slender and not particularly original, but the author counterbalances this by some truly excellent bits of description and character delineation. The old village doctor of Milford stands vividly before us, and the quiet humor of the first part stands in striking antithesis to the deep patnos of the latter part of the tale.

"The Caucus in Ward Three" is a story of a caucus which meets for the nomination of an alderman. Several examples of the genus politician (including a man of unmistakable Irish accent), one or two jokes, and a short description have been poured into the author's crucible and the residuum is a political sketch, with no plot and of some interest.

"A Modern Discovery" is an excellent character study of one Vandeleur, a cultivated man and an artist of thirty-five whose chief idiosyncracy-and a pardonable one-is a passionate love for the college surroundings and conditions of life.

The verse of the number is common-place. The "Triolets" have none of that delicacy of turn and sentiment which this particular form of rhyme should exhibit. The other poem of the number is a sonnet upon "Greatness," a word which stands in direct contrast to the lines it heads. The chief features of this sonnet are the absence of poetical imagery and a presence of mixed metaphors.

The "College Kodaks" are well taken and the editorials of the number are as strong and as forcible as usual.