Nowadays when one encounters people who are in a reposeful state of mind about anything, they excite one's interest, even though they may not be either congenitally or congenially interesting. Among the few groups that are resting easy in a serene consciousness of good work well done, with not much more to do, is the fraternity or the sorority, of those who feel that they have at last helped to make the colleges safe for the young man. That a college is a wild and wicked place, and that of all colleges Harvard has been for years the wildest and wickedest, has been a fond belief in some of the dryest circles in the country. Days of profligacy and nights of drunkenness were supposed to constitute the life of the Harvard undergraduate.

The misconception has provoked the spirited derision or the silent scorn of those famaliar with the facts. Acknowledging that the use of alcoholic stimulants had has a certain vogue at Harvard, they deny that it has been greater there than at other universities; and they contend that no one can tell whether its influence has been for good or evil. Alcohol has damaged some young men in college, no doubt,--though it would probably have damaged them just the same if they had never gone to college. That it has been an aid to others without doing them any harm a good many Harvard men will stoutly assert. They remember friendships that originated and received a glowing impulse over a bottle of wine; they know that for the removal of narrowness and prejudice they owe a debt to alcohol. Men have quarreled at Harvard in their cups, and men have been maudlin over one another in their cups; but between these manifestations of extreme emotion brought on by excessive indulgence have been many more numerous instances of men who have been led through the mellowing influence of rum to discover one another and, to a less but still a useful degree, themselves.

What at college, will take the place of alcoholic liquors as a promoter of contacts, a revealer of sympathetic tastes, a humanizer of stiff and frigid young minds? Why has drink played the important part that it has in college fiction, unless it is that the writers of college fiction have recognized its influence in shaping human relations at college?

There will probably be a period during which prohibition will not be absolute and alcohol will not be wholly shorn of its powers. It is possible that the members of the clubs have provided against an immediately dry future. There may be for a time club dinners that will be reminiscent of the past. But the skeleton will be obtrusive at the feast. No one who drinks now can be happy; no one who lives on his capital can be happy. Enjoyment of alcoholic drink depends on its being ungrudging. The days are gone when a man will offer a conktail to another in sheer exuberance of good feeling. If a man is so fortunate as still to possess the ingredients for cocktails, he will be calculating in disposing of them. There will be a few, a very few persons that he will deem worthy of admitting to cocktail fellowship. And even with them he will feel a niggardly reluctance gnawing at his heart as he distributes the dividends from the shaker. --The Graduates' Magazine.