STUDENT LIFE AT THE ANNEX.

A correspondent of the Woman's Journal writes concerning the Harvard Annex:

"The Annex has, as yet, few pretentions to architectural beauty. An old-fashioned private house on the Appian Way supplies four front rooms, which constitute all that is outward and visible of the institution. One of these rooms is fitted up as a library and sitting-room. Low book-cases contain the modest collection of books. There are besides two recitation rooms, which Mr. Howells might call 'sincerely bare,' but which are amply comfortable for their purposes. In the sunny parlor, with its home-like belongings, had gathered Professor Hill's Rhetoric class. A half dozen young ladies sat about informally while the professor read his lecture. He had just delivered the same lecture to the sophomore class in the college, and adapted it to his present audience by means of frequent parentheses. It was somewhat after this fashion: - 'Unless a man acquires a taste for reading before he goes into business (or a woman before she marries), it cannot be cultivated in afterlife'. . 'The trouble with the writing of you young men is that you have nothing to say. (And the same, I regret to add, is true of young women.') - 'I have seen letters written by graduates of Harvard College that would disgrace a boy of ten. (Of graduates of the Annex I am not yet prepared to speak.) Whatever the liberally educated man (or woman) should or should not know, no argument is needed to show that he (or she) should be able to write good English.' Professor Hill has that first quality of a good teacher, the power of holding a startled attention. His keen-edged sentences oblige one not only to listen but to believe; for his vigorous style is clearly the natural outgrowth of a sound and vigorous judgment. It is this honest severity of training that women's minds at this moment need. 'Do the Annex girls enjoy the advantages of Cambridge society? is a question often asked. No; partly because the students are working-women without leisure for frequent engagements; partly because Cambridge society is busy and absorbed, and does not go out of its way to offer the Annex social culture. Cambridge, England, is said to have adopted Girton and Newnham with motherly cordiality, an example that might be gracefully followed by its American namesake. Do they see much of the Harvard students? is a question that soon follows. No; their work never brings them together, and they show, on all occasions, a wholesome indifference to each other's presence."