The editorial in the current number of the Advocate which receives notice in another column is, as there stated, an attempt at an explanation of the failure of undergraduate literary work to attain a higher standard, by suggesting that it is due to lack of experiences which furnish live topics to write about. The writer says truly that experience is necessary, "for nothing is heeded which has not the ring of actual knowledge." He goes on to say that the college man exhausts his stock of college experiences in his Freshman and Sophomore years and then "grows stale."
While it may be true that the writers of today are not college-bred men, the statement that undergraduate literary work fails to attain a higher standard because the would-be writer "grows stale" seems open to doubt. Is not this failure rather due to a somewhat prevailing tendency among young writers to be ambitious to consider subjects which lie outside of their little life experiences, and to which they can at best impart but a supperficial atmosphere? To be concrete, college literature tends to be too ambitious. If the undergradate aspirant would narrow his point of view and condescend to smaller subjects which form a part of his everyday life, and to which if he only knew it he could do justice, not only would the standard in that line of work be raised, but college literature would, so to speak, take off its disguise and appear in its natural light.
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