Advertisement

The Advocate.

A new number of the Advocate is out announcing the election of Mr. DeWolf as president for the rest of the year. In the editorial columns approving comment is made on the president's report. The editor reviews the forces at work in the development of our University system and holds the opinion that our graduate and professional schools must be built on broad foundations if Harvard is to continue to lead American institutions of learning. The strength of our tradition and our association with all that is best and greatest in American thought and and letters is given due note but the wealth and energy of the west as expressed in Chicago University is also recognized. The editorial matter ends with a paragraph on the schedule of the H. A. A. for the next half year.

The "Angel of The Adoration" is the title of the first piece of contributed writing. It purports to be a series of extracts from the writer's diary at Oberammergau during the passion play. By means of a series of daily entries the girl who played the angel of the adoration in the passion play is made to fall most hopelessly in love with the writer. She was the daughter of the landlord at whose hostelry the family of the writer were staying and her passion was conceived as she waited on the young gentleman at table. At the end of four days they take a long and nocturnal walk during which, "innocent and pure as she is" she does not resent being kissed. The next day as the writer had resolved not to flirt with her he feels repentant and ends his Oberammergau journal with the hope that she will "try" to forget him. If the episode is founded on fact one must infer that writer and young lady had more than normal powers of impression and susceptibility. If it is fiction, it commits the sin of improbability. Certain touches of local color are well done.

"Under the Old Regime," is the title of some dialogue love verses. They are typical of most college verse in that they have nothing to say. They differ from a large part of college verse in that the form is poor. Mixed and illogical metaphor, words unfortunately chosen are fatal to the expression of any fancy of the Old Regime.

"A Veteran" is a rather mediocre story from the stand point of college writing of an old man with a termagant daughter-in-law. It is told with patches of Yankee dialect.

A Farce entitled "Wine is a Mocker" is as good a piece of dialogue as there has been in the Advocate in some time. The unnecessary coarseness of the tipsy Mr. Ransom in his conversation with Miss Ames one feels to be bad art. It breaks unpleasantly through the playful treatment which to that point had carried the story, and implies a complication unnecessary to the climax. The picture of Mr. Ransom at the piano is capital, however, as is the exposure of Miss Ames. Although the combination of the sister and stranee chum in the brother's room while he and chaperone have gone out, is old, still Mr. Brown has given the Advocate a pleasantly new version.

Advertisement

The College Kodaks with one exception are the usual collection of more or less consciously awkward literary poses. The exception will be recognized as clever. It borders on good morals - but to quote the paragraph in question one may know perfectly well what that means and still not be able easily to define it. It is the best expression of the risque spirit which has been periodically showing up in the Advocate since last year, that has yet appeared.

A extremely mediocre college sonnet follows the Kodaks and precedes a sketch very cleverly done called. "Looking Backward." R. C. R. puts himself on indefinitely and looks back to describe the storm which took down the electric wires when Boston was still meshed in their death net.

A rather pointless sketch of two boys one of whom drowns under circumstances somewhat difficult to understand finishes the number.

Advertisement