We are struck by a paradox. The University gives Music 4, a course in the Appreciation of Music. About 200 music-loving undergraduates can be seen at the local and Boston Symphony concerts. There is a course in the appreciation of art, Fine Arts 1d, and maybe 50 undergraduates attend the Greater Boston art museums in a week. The University gives no course in the appreciation of football, and yet over 2,000 go to the local exhibitions. At mid-western colleges we are told, a man may major in football, and then go to Law School to take special courses in football rules and their interpretation.

* * *

The magnanimous writing of introductions by academic bigwigs of the Harvard faculty to push the books of their understudies always impresses us. But this close cooperation is not always rewarded. An attractive green book in the Widener Reading Room, in the History 56 shelf bears witness to the way in which the patronizing statements of a full-professor may return to plague and mortify him. We quote from Professor C.H. Haring.

"Dr. Normano possesses peculiar qualifications for handling the problems involved in this intense international competition for commercial and financial leadership . . ." Peculiar Indeed! Dr. Normano, as is generally known is now "doing time" in Germany for the mishandling of certain problems of finance.

"Born a Brazilian but trained in the best economic schools abroad, he approaches with a certain detachment . . ." Dr. Normano's training was hardly done in the best schools at all. His knowledge of finance lead him to detach himself quickly from Berlin Police nets with the $700,000 he procured mysteriously by his great talents. But he is back in Germany now, as Isaak Lewin, Berlin-born and bred. This is all very cruel to dig up again, but Normano was a great economist, and we are still sorely puzzled. And we pity Professor Haring.

* * *

Chatting with the secretaries in the University Museum is sometimes profitable. The other day one of them told us a remarkable little incident. Some time ago, a student who held an Emergency Employment job was instructed, on his arrival at the Museum, to poison a large number of deceased birds, or bird skins. This he proceeded to do, consuming ten hours in the effort. When next he appeared at the scene of his labors, he was told that there was not as much poison as had been counted on, and that he was to remove all the insect deterrent that he had just put in the boxes. With a faint feeling of futility, he followed out these orders, devouring another ten hours, and being credited accordingly. Such things as these, we feel, take part of the glamour from the sense of-being engaged on a scientific work of value.

* * *

"Fifty years ago I was a student at Harvard and my father was a Democratic United States senator from California. In one of my rare regular vacations, or one of My FREQUENT ENFORCED VACATIONS from College, I went to Washington and my father took me to see . . . etc." --W. R. Hearat, from the true words of the prophet in the Boston American, October 26. We always take such modesty from Mr. Hearst with large lumps of salt. It is interesting to speculate on how absence from Harvard does not make its heart grow fonder.