THE LAST STRAW.

LIGHTLY skimming over the surface of life in Cambridge, your brilliant contemporary, the Lampoon, is shocked to find us much given to hypocrisy. If this charge is true, let us hide our diminished heads. The revelations made this winter concerning the undergraduates of Harvard are fully as startling as the recent disclosures in Washington. We have been shown to be oligarchs, indifferent, pessimistic, given to "European clothes" and Eastlake furniture, "a cigarette outside and low thoughts within"; and to all this is now added the epithet "hypocrite." It is the straw which breaks the camel's back. But before we succumb entirely, let us examine this last blackening charge.

"About half of everything here is hypocritical to a more or less extent," is the "awful statement," to make which the Lampoon abandons its levity. If this statement be true, the Lampoon will not have lived in vain. If by these words we are brought to a realizing sense of our condition, our "comic college journal" will deserve all the good things that have been said of it, and may rest its reputation on this one point.

I am unwilling, however, to accept the statement without a struggle. If there is on the staff of the "comic journal" a Mr. Digby who asks questions of instructors to give the impression that he is much interested in what he is studying, is there no one to be found elsewhere who really has the interest which the distinguished artist assumes? Are there not many men, on the other hand, who, not having any particular interest in what they are doing, nevertheless make no pretence to seem interested? There are, I think, three classes of students, - those who have a real interest in their work, those who have no interest and never make believe that they have, and finally the Mr. Digby who "runs up to the instructor after recitation." This gentleman now declares that the majority of undergraduates are classed with him and do as he does; that more than half of us feel no interest in what we are doing, and, to raise our marks, we pretend to have that which we lack. He is rash, it seems to me, in judging others by himself. I know too many really interested students to believe that a majority of us are Digbys.

But the undergraduate is not the only person in whom hypocrisy has been discovered. As the students are hypocrites in their relations to the Faculty, so are the members of that august body hypocrites in their relations to the overseers and examiners. To such a painful conclusion does the discovery of the Lampoon lead us. To disprove this final result of the charge would require knowledge of proceedings to which ordinary mortals are not admitted. I must leave, therefore, the implied statement that "about half" of the Faculty are hypocrites "to a more or less extent," to be disproved by some one who lays claim to a clearer understanding of the motives which govern the actions of the "powers that be."

To review separately each of the charges of hypocrisy, and to endeavor to find out how many of the statements in the Lampoon were too strong would take too much space and time. There is, however, at the close of the list of accusations, a singular statement. The Glee Club, the Institute, and the Art Club are attacked at one blow, and we are assured of being Digbys in our relations with ourselves as well as with the Faculty. It is amusing to see "the singing of the Glee Club" and "the Art Club's knowledge of art" condemned in the same sentence. The Glee Club certainly pretends to know something of singing, but yet it is undeniable that they can sing; and whether they sing well or not, they cannot justly be called hypocrites until they pretend to do something that they fail to do. With the Art Club the case is different. No knowledge of art is required of candidates for admission, as the Glee Club requires of its members ability to sing. Members of the Art Club no more pretend to be connoisseurs than the speakers in the Institute pretend to be great debaters. In the Art Club men may learn something of art, and in the Institute they may get some little practice in speaking; but as far as I am aware, neither of these societies pretends to anything more, and, as long as they make no such pretence, they do not, in my opinion, lay themselves open to the charge of hypocrisy.