A LETTER.

DEAR SUE: The ordinary course of college life is tame enough, but occasionally something occurs to break the monotony. The other night loud screams were heard issuing from the west entry of Holworthy. Of course we turned out en masse to see what the matter was. It appeared, on investigation, that one of the girls in that entry had been frightened out of her wits at seeing the ghost of an old professor who used to occupy her room twenty or thirty years ago. According to her story, he scowled at her fearfully, and gruffly bade her vacate immediately, and no longer let his room be desecrated by a female presence. Tradition makes spirits quite common around Cambridge, and the Professor at the Breakfast Table, you know, mentions having seen the devil's footsteps here in his youth. I have often fancied that certain black streaks on the end of Holworthy were his tracks burnt into the bricks, perhaps when he was going up to spend the evening in the third or fourth story. If they are his marks, he must have awfully long feet; but then, you know, luxurious growth in tropical regions is not unknown.

One of the religious societies here has published a pamphlet, showing that, on the principles of the gyroscope, we are liable every time we dance and get to whirling fast to whop over on to our heads and spin there.

You asked me how we liked the fellows here. Generally speaking, there is very little love lost between us. (There are one or two brilliant exceptions, of course, but I reserve my accounts of them till Christmas vacation.) They take extraordinary pains to jeer at us and snub us at every opportunity. They fill their paper - "The Harvardiana" - with slurs and poor jokes on ours. But I think "The Tea-Table and University News-Letter" can hold its own with their wretched periodical. There's a dear little Freshman across the entry who keeps me in tobacco and matches in the most obliging manner. He's the best boy in his class.

Jenny Adams and Mattie Page, who went home with me last vacation, you remember, are matched for a two-mile pull, from the boat-house down, to-morrow morning. They're selling pools up stairs now.

One drawback to our progress here is the bashfulness of the instructors. When we advance an opinion in the class-room, and back it up with argument, the professor appears to draw back into his shell, and to decline controversy with us, because we are ladies. They need n't be so awfully afraid of us. Meanwhile the students of the stronger (?) sex perform what they call a "wood up." Before I came here I always supposed that the bray was the distinctive noise of the donkey; here it appears that the stamp is.

My chum has gone down to get some lumber to board up our keyhole. These Hollis keyholes are about the size of a window.

At the election the other day I voted the Ben Butler ticket, as almost everybody did, it seems. I'm glad he's elected. He's old for President, I know, but then he's sly.

I'm dying for a smoke, and as I have n't any tobacco of my own, I think I'll close and go over to my Freshman's to roll a cigarette.

Affectionately yours, NELL.P. S. Ask father, please, what law books I had better read up for a forensic on indirect claims.