A COMPARISON.

WITHOUT intending to dispel any fair dream of present happiness that may dwell in the mind of any youthful student during the first few months of his college life, we may recall our experience and by comparison hope to arrive at some agreeable conclusions.

We thought we had stepped into and were enjoying a greater share of pleasure than could be possible outside of college halls. Even when summoned week after week to attend examinations, our pleasant vision did not vanish. We never realized that the atmosphere of the Dean's office was less favorable to us than to others, although our petitions were often not granted. If answers to our questions were somewhat brief, or there was any lack of fervor in our welcome, it was attributed to the attention necessarily due to matters of importance decided there, thus leaving no time for the little civilities always expected from public officials. Arguments would have been useless to prove that we received less attention, enjoyed fewer privileges, or were regarded even with less respect than our older brothers. Conviction on that point was impossible. Fortunately that ever-present delusion of a blissful state never fades until seen through the eyes of a Sophomore or Junior. Harvard's youngest sons are seldom spoiled by indulgence, or handled with excessive care and tenderness.

The manner of instructing, in Freshman year, gives little opportunity for difference of opinion or exercise of judgment. There is no alternative, you must believe without any modification the theory or interpretation proposed by a single writer. Keeping fully in mind that the embryo professor must imitate before he can originate, we feel that the question whether their instruction is profitable to those who are trying to prepare, in the short period of a college course, as thoroughly as may be for the duties of life, is worth a little consideration.

If the chief object of the first year is only the acclimation of the would-be student, and the instructor's duty is only to keep the mind from falling into its primitive weakness, a tutor's services are doubtless as efficient as any could be. But if rapid progress in clear and determinate knowledge is desired, if universal and indisputable truths are sought instead of partial and half-tested theories, an experience greater than a tutor's becomes necessary.

One advanced in life, who has been able to test many theories and make frequent applications, alone is able to offer what is truly valuable.

There is no delusion produced by the nobler title of professor; we know the difference both in the manner of giving and the instruction given. The relations between instructor and learner are different, are less restrained and more sociable.

The professor is sure of his calling, his fitness for teaching. Men seldom voluntarily make a life work of what is distasteful to them, and if forced into a pursuit incompatible with the natural tendencies of their minds, their labors in one unwelcome would never gain them professorships in our first places of learning.

Our professors not only give us the conclusions from a life study of their special subjects, but also show us how simple and natural the methods of experiment, how numerous the sources from which we may obtain materials, and that the process of thought on subjects most remote from the mind in its early years is in no way different from that we have employed many times on familiar subjects. Their greatest desire and most beneficial service is to infuse every mind coming within their reach with as great an interest as possible in the subject to be studied, leaving as a secondary consideration the learning the details of that subject.

Their opinions are received by attentive minds and have their influence upon us, not because they come from gray hairs, but because we recognize them as the results of long meditation upon subjects of actual and faithful investigation. From the contrast between the two kinds of instruction we have received, the belief must come that the Freshman year is only a period of initiation, during which you receive the contempt of all, from the highest official to the goody, in order that you may afterward enjoy their greater favor.