The first number of the Advocate, which appeared yesterday, shows a very distinctive "Harvard" note. It bristles with local color; except for one short lyric it consists entirely of "Harvard" prose and verse. This is admirable, or at least it would be admirable were it not that the two most prominent articles--"The Philosophy of Horatio" and "A Fake Play"--distinctly overemphasize the aspect of College life that is least to our credit. Drunkennes and vice unquestionably exist but it is a pity to have the idea of them rubbed in through the columns of the undergraduate papers. Both stories are well written; but they lead the uniformed reader to suppose that Harvard men spend their lives in an atmosphere, not morely of hilarity, but of reckless dissipation. "The Philosophy of Horatio" is almost well enough done to be justifiable: but "A Fake Play" has the fundamental weakness of being didactic without being clear. The third prose article, "Tactics for Teas," is amusing and entirely harmless; but it is too slight to prevent the prose of the number from conveying a general impression of murky disaster and gloom.

The verse is entirely different in tone and on the whole distinctly well done, "Corporation Football" is the sort of thing that ought to be valuable years from now as an admirable expression of the undergraduate feeling toward the reform of football by the authorities. "The Cruise of the Scholarship" is cleverly done, and the verse is excellent. "Victor and Vanquished" would be better were it not for a suggestion of those heroic bits in "Pieces for Recitation" which afford so much of the material for grammar school declamation.

The editorials handle adequately the inevitable and trite subjects of the opening year. The one entitled "Concerning Advice to Freshmen" is unusually clever; but it attempts to take the traditional Freshman away from us by asserting, in veiled language, that a Freshman may know almost as much as a Sophomore. This is unfair; the "verdant Freshman" has become a College tradition, and the Advocate is too respectable to break down wantonly so venerable a superstition. On the whole, the aim of the number is most commendable; it is only to be regretted that so many of our writers insist on following the plan of presenting as the whole of College life its most objectionable side