This afternoon at three o'clock, the man who invented the sour kraut eating and balogna slicing contest will find himself no longer a record holder. At that hour the most recent marathon of them all, the youngest offspring of a race long the victim of the inbreeding of defectives will commence within earshot of the Square. At present no steps to avert the holding of the Music Box endurance run are reported to have been taken by the board of health, but that may well be explained on the ground that the community physicians are interested merely in the physical well being of their charges.

One feature of the contest which will recommend itself at once to any group of undergraduates is the sturdy atmosphere of rugged amateurism. Absolutely no mention of financial award to the winner has been mentioned in the official announcements and one may as well assume that the participants will engage merely out of love for free competition and the clean hard joy of listening to Helen Kane. Captious persons may always point to the promoters of such schemes as the real profiteers, but it is to be hoped that no such stigma should be attached to a firm which has done so much for appreciation of music in and around Harvard Square.

Hardly a day goes by that one is not forcibly made aware of what these men have been doing for the sweetest of the arts; and even in the black of night the cloistered scholar may awake to find the strains of music penetrating the former fastness of the Yard. How unbecoming then to impute motives other than the keenest interest in making sport to the promoters of the present music marathon.