The already numerous body of "Harvard" stories has lately received an addition in "The Cult of the Purple Rose: a Phase of Harvard Life," by Shirley Everton Johnson '95. By the device of an imagined undergraduate society of pseudo-literary tastes the author is enabled to introduce several verses and tales, the relation of which to college surroundings is slight, and which are possessed of no striking merit. Of his own book he says in his preface: "No Harvard man will take this book seriously. It deals solely with the doings of a few extremists." The reader is likely to agree with him. In making this statement he has deserved better of the University than some fellow-authors who express no qualification in their writing. It would seem better still if, recognizing that his book was not fairly representative of Harvard life, he had carried his self-denial to the point of leaving the word "Harvard" out of his title.
The Cult of the Purple Rose, by S. E. Johnson. Boston: Richard G. Badger: the Gorham Press, $1.25.
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