Fifty years ago Mother Advocate found before her the "pleasant though unexpected task--one, however, none the less pleasant from its unexpectedness--of welcoming to the green fields and pastures new of college literature another aspirant for favor," and it was a very courteous greeting that she extended to the young "Magenta." If the child is father to the man the two are often strangely dissimilar. . . . But if the present paper and its editors inherit few features or characteristics from 1873 they do inherit--at least on such formal occasions as birthdays--the excellent good will of Mother Advocate.

We wish we had a prospect of witnessing a meeting between that estimable lady and the Prosperous Gentleman on Plympton Street, for we feel sure that their reminiscences over a dish of tea or even an empty punch bowl would be fascinating history. There would be many things to recall of the old days in which there were of course, giants: ambrosial make-up meetings whence numbers issued more or less by mistake; the horrors of proof reading at dawn; the bitterness of controversy and mutual criticism; the tense excitement each has experienced in the turmoil of competition with more than one "up-start" but determined rival.

Mother Advocate has indeed, changed very slightly. She was always a little absent minded and impractical and she still clings to her absurd habit of writing verse. The Gentleman, on the other hand, has been content to forget the romantic tendencies of his youth and to plunge into the whirl of business, with the result that he has now a mansion, a gold watch fob, and a bank account of his own. But he has also something more valuable a reputation that none can respect and honor more than Mother Advocate. --Harvard Advocate.