Review of Christmas Advocate

The Christmas Advocate has the spirit of the season. A pleasant editorial on the Spugs, counsels us to combine usefulness and beauty in our gifts, and the stories touch in one way on another on the meaning of the time.

Today even a Christmas number will probably have at least one story dealing with a sex problem, and the expected happens in Mr. Osborne's "Dark the Dawn," an interesting study, in sufficiently plain words, of the effect of life in Germany on a lonely American boy whose "morals, like his religion, had been a family hand-me-down given him by his father." The detestable smugness of the Pastor's household is realistically described, and the only wonder is that Kendall did not find his way to the white--or should we say the red--lights sooner. The story might have ended after Kendall reads the delayed home letters. It is an admirable lesson to foolish fathers.

Good Story of Western Life.

A whiff from the west comes to us by way of contrast in Mr. Jackson's "Crossed Wires." The plot is worked out with considerable ingenuity. The plains lingo seems natural, and if the tale proceeds along well recognized cowboy lines--it is a cowboy story.

In "Harvard News" we are on familiar ground in Mr. Nelson's interesting and sensible account of the pernicious distortion of University news by the newspapers. The concrete examples will open the eyes of those whose knowledge of the evil has been vague. The article is a strong plea for the great good that might be done by a Harvard Press Club.

Of the verse, Mr. Clark's "To a Cello" has most distinction. The feeling is sincere, and the skilfully chosen words sensitively echo the feeling. "Wrangler of the X Bar U," by Mr. R. M. Jopling, has a good swing and vigorous lines. Mr. Sanger's "The Vision of His Work" is an interesting example of the tendency to seek poetic subjects in the sights and sounds of a great city. Occasionally the choice of words might be happier, as in the line "The whistles of the harbor craft ring out." Infelicities are rare, however, and there are often very good lines, such as,

"The salty tide with endless lapping wash

Mutters and slips and eddies round the piles."

The Christmas number should find many readers to wish the Advocate prosperity and a happy new year.