The prevailing tendency of the Advocate this year, an undue fondness for scenes of blood, is well illustrated by the number which comes out today. It contains three deaths, two of them in terrible agonies, and described in a most realistic manner.

It seems a pity that the Advocate should devote so much of its space to stories of this nature. In the first place a little more care might be used to discriminate correctly between what is tragic, and what is merely gory. Again, though many of these tales are written with genuine vigor and dash, they should not be allowed to take precedence of the large field of light literature, dealing with more delicate and more polished themes. This field the Advocate seldom penetrates, and it might be cultivated with profit both to writers and to readers.

A concrete instance of the blood-thirstiness objected to is supplied by the following sentence quoted from the longest article, entitled "The Flagellants." "Every day thereafter, the victim's bloody back burned up in red hell-fire before the tormentor's wild eyes: divine threats of damnation echoed through the silence; amid the awful glare two gaunt figures writhed,- the one upon the floor, his eyes starting out in agony, the other in the air, his eyes swelling with glutted revenge."

For the rest of the number, rather the best contribution is "The Home Coming of Jerry Mills," by Robert P. Vail '99. It is a story with a definite point, and a distinct climax.