A MARKING MACHINE.

IT has been rumored abroad, and doubtless are this has reached the ears of the readers of the Crimson, that a Marking Machine has been invented.

A Marking Machine! Since Edison's great discoveries and inventions we have been prepared for something still more marvellous, but did the most imaginative ever dream of such a machine? Last winter the Advocate suggested plank walks for the Yard, - an original, a grand idea, - but surely the same head did not invent this machine.

How very exact will be the marks by this new method, which must analyze the understanding with mathematical precision, estimating the work done as the hydrometer measures the alcohol in spirits, at the same time discovering and exposing all the ingenious devices by which examination-papers have been made easy. Every one will be truly gauged according to his actual merit by this unerring machine, which will play havoc with those cunning seekers after college-rank whose sole claim to distinction is the idea entertained by their instructors that they are trying hard. Amiable rank-smiths, there is to be no more of this sort of scholastic reputation-building.

It is pleasant to anticipate the advantages which the machine will confer upon instructors, and the great relief it will afford them. No longer will it be necessary for the conscientious Professor to spend the Christmas vacation in examining blue books, exhausting his energies in the vain endeavor to decide whether a book is entitled to 39 or 40 per cent, a question quite beyond the skill "even of a Professor of Harvard College." And the conscience of the unconscientious instructor, who will not trouble himself with an examination of the books, flattering himself that he has an intuitive perception of the merits and acquirements of each of his pupils, and grades them accordingly with the security of the turn of a copper, will also find relief from a great responsibility. And the "Curve System," that precursor of the machine, that also will come to grief and be laid aside with many other things that have answered a purpose and had their day.

To be sure, the student will lose the soothing privilege of a grumble at thirty-three per cent in a prescribed study, nor can the ingenious Junior, a veteran at his trade, complain or explain, should next August discover to him an average of forty-nine and ninety-nine hundredths per centum. But these drawbacks are quite outbalanced by the many evident advantages to be derived from the machine.

Of what description is this new invention? I really do not know. Perhaps it is like one of Krupp's guns. If so, what excellent swabbers and rammers and powder-monkeys the proctors would make! Perhaps - but why should I speculate? Why should the idea - the exceedingly faint and undefined idea - that at the approaching semi-annuals the brains of each and every one of us are to be carefully removed, dissected, weighed, and measured by this infallible instrument transform me into a querulous interrogation-point? Let us welcome the new machine, and accept with courage its edicts, conscious that they will be an improvement upon the existing system in one respect, and that altogether the most important, - some reliance can be placed upon them.