INDIFFERENCE.

IT is hard for any one so free from care as a College student, to cast aside the pleasant habit of indifference. Without even his own support to provide for, with no one dependent upon him, with few rules the breaking of which will entail any serious penalty, he gets to look at the outside world as something rather amusing, a little vulgar, and not at all connected with himself. There are, of course, the usual number of exceptions to prove the rule. We have, in embryo, doctors who sharply detect disease in the unconscious passer-by, who prefer the attractions of clinics to those of the theatre; chemists who poison themselves and their friends with powerful drugs; ministers under the double influence of duty and taste not yet gratified; and lawyers familiar with the names, at least, of Blackstone, Coke, and many others.

But such men are few. Most of us are not particularly earnest, even in the pursuit of pleasure. By the aid of an "advanced civilization," the "culture of the nineteenth century," etc., we have, curiously enough, just reached that position of dignified indifference which the American Indian long ago attained without any such aids at all.

We can learn something in this respect from our friends of the smaller colleges. The senior in shiny black who takes life so very hard, and is so very pedantic, is not, to be sure, so dashing and cultivated a character as his contemporaries at Harvard and Yale, but he certainly can teach them one lesson at least, - that of earnestness. I would not, for the world, be understood to advocate what is sometimes meant by "energy" or "enterprise," that noisy spirit of "go-ahead-a-tiveness" which calls so loudly for the abolition of everything old under the head of "fogyism," and for the encouragement of everything new, under the head of "progression," - a progression which consists rather in tearing down everything behind you, than in building up anything in front, - nor is much to be gained from that spirit of easily kindled enthusiasm which chiefly shows itself in the rejection of the positive for the comparative, of the comparative for the superlative.

But what we need at Harvard is a deeper appreciation of the fact that college is but a preparatory school, after all; that before very long we shall be placed in a position where earnestness is almost indispensable to success, and indifference a thing to be fought against, instead of cherished. This estimate of the value of earnestness is not exactly new; it certainly must have occurred to Noah when he set about building the ark, - to say nothing of Adam or the pre-Adamite, - and it has been handed down to us in a great many old adages, which are often neglected just because they are so old and tiresome.

But if the repetition of a truth is ever excusable, it certainly is when many of the surroundings have a tendency to bury it in forgetfulness or disregard, as they have in the ordinary life of the college student. M. C. H.