IN his annual report, President Eliot draws attention to a fact which is probably truer of Harvard than of any other of the large universities of this country. The college loses very few instructors of the higher ranks through the efforts of other institutions to draw from our force of teachers. During the past year, seven universities and colleges have made offers of higher salaries and titles to four professors four assistant professors and six instructors. In each case the call has been declined. At the same time the number of assistants and recent graduates who accept positions in other colleges is noticeably large. The University must eventually reap the fruit of this wide dissemination. We cannot hope or wish to retain here as instructors all who are fitted for such positions. And yet it is gratifying, and something on which we may justly pride ourselves, that there are here at Harvard influences which prevail over the alluring offers of the rich institutions, which have sprung up recently. Harvard, in its present endowment, cannot hope to raise its salaries to the standard of some of our sister colleges. She must hold her own by inducements which will appeal to the aesthetic and intellectual part of a man's nature.

"The influences which bind its teachers to the University are" says President Eliot, "chiefly: The dignity and stability of the institution; the perfect liberty of opinion; the freedom in teaching - every teacher teaching as he thinks best, except as the more experienced teachers may persuade and inform the less experienced; the great resources of the University in books and collections and the fact that any teacher can at any time cause books desirable in his department to be bought by the Library; the separation of Cambridge from the luxurious society of great cities; the propinquity to the resources of Boston for the gratification of aesthetic and musical tastes; the healthfulness of Cambridge, and the facilities for bringing up children in a wholesome way, both physically and mentally; and lastly, the consideration which learning and high character traditionally enjoy in eastern Massachusetts, independent of pecuniary condition." It would be difficult to sum up more concisely or truly than this the secret of Harvard's strength.