Although the first of January is to the college man less than the first of October like the beginning of a new year, it at least marks the commencement of a season quite different from the fall term with its jumble of freshmen, foot-ball and hour examinations. The winter term is pre-eminently the season for good, solid work. To the average man the distractions from college duties are fewer and there are less excuses for postponement of work.

Three weeks are left before the beginning of the mid-year examinations, and such men as have fallen at all behind in their courses will do well to start in today with a determination to get themselves into the best possible condition to stand their semi-annual ordeal. It may well be argued that the cramming system, with its short-sighted policy of making the examinations ends in themselves, is a thing to be frowned down. But so long as examinations are the only means of discovering how faithfully a student has performed the work assigned to him, just so long will every one of us find it necessary to clear his memory on points which have grown hazy, and the sluggard will try to do three months' work in three days.

Activity in athletics will soon begin again, and of all the seasons in the year there is none in which fewer objections can be raised to the relative amount of time which is given to athletics and studies. On this point we are forced to disagree with Mr. Caspar Whitney who, in a recent number of Harper's Weekly, showed himself opposed to indoor training in at least one branch of sport-baseball. If the only object of our athletics were to turn out the most skilful teams possible, and if their indoor work took any considerable part of a man's time from his studies, objection might well be made. But as a matter of fact this preliminary training forms the incentive for regular gymnasium work for a large number of men who can be of no possible service to the 'varsity captains, but who are themselves all the better off for an hour's relaxation every afternoon.