First November Advocate

The new Advocate is a good average number, containing nothing of very marked distinction and nothing notably below standard. The editorial is a sensible and tactfully written discussion of the question of Freshman clubs; and in "Varied Outlooks," J. Richardson, Jr., writes moderately in defence of athletics. The points he makes are good points, but they do not always bear on the objections they are meant to answer. Team-play does indeed cultivate honesty and unselfishness, but it is quite possible without the commercializing of athletics, which it is here used to defend. In "The Poet who Dies Young," Van Wyck Brooks makes a plea against materialism. Compared with Mr. Brook's writing of last year, this retains the valuable part of his subtlety and delicacy of expression, and shows a desirable gain in clearness of outline and definition of thought, even if the style is not yet quite natural. J. L. Warren's the Crush" is somewhat conventional; F. Schenck's "The Pall of the Wild" is cleverly named, and, like R. M. Arkush's "Sleep Fifteen Minutes after Luncheon," strikes one as much truer to Sophomore human nature than one would like to imagine it. Both are well written. "Ex-Machina," the remaining piece of fiction, is amusing, but like all the stories in this number, painfully unheroic.

The verse does not call for extended comment. E. E. Hunt's "Autumn" gathers pleasingly a bunch of characteristic detail. The author's sense of smell seems to be exceptionally acute. Most of us would find it hard to describe the odor either of a swarm of bees or of a maiden-hair fern. In "The, Golden Calf" Mr. Pulsifer expounds a false idea. Many men are neither the slaves nor the masters of money--professors, for example. F. Biddle's quatrain is expressed with neatness and restraint, and "The Wind" by Mr. C. P. Aiken is the most imaginative thing in the issue. Mr. Alfred, Noyes's "The Flowers of Old Japan" is appreciatively noticed.