There will doubtless be a very considerable number of students in the vicinity of Cambridge during the holidays. To all such men we heartily commend the invitation of President and Mrs. Eliot to the Christmas Eve reception in Phillips Brooks House. One often feels in our academic life the almost total lack of personal contact and fellowship with the older men of our community; and the comparatively few attempts which meet with any success at all in opening up this phase of life which is so full of benefit for both the mature and the growing members of the University, stand out quite uniquely. It is difficult to analyze the causes of this condition of affairs, but in the main we believe that both students and Faculty are to blame with a more or less considerable portion charged to the atmosphere of our highly academic University. This, we confess, is a much overworked and abused explanation, applied indiscriminately to University affairs in general.

It is not our intention to proclaim here that all men attending the Christmas Eve reception or one of the University teas or similar functions will, on crossing the threshold of Phillips Brooks House, feel immediately the warmth of comradeship with the members of the Faculty, or any particular professor who is more personally interested in the undergraduates as men than as students. We are certain, nevertheless, that such opportunities are often given, and that the President's reception next week is one which should appeal to a goodly number of men.