January Advocate Interesting; Verse and Prose are Serious

The January Number of the Advocate is uncommonly interesting. It is plain that after the destruction and the distraction of war the old College is emerging--not settling back--to its own plane once more, and that what Stevenson has called "an unwavering creative purpose" is again asserting itself. Not that the strokes of the artist are always sure, or his lines and modelling free from false touches or even ugly angles. This is illustrated in the imagistic verses, of which there are two rather ambitious contributions, "The Beggar" and "Lights and Snows"; also in the stories "Yestdo" and "The Glory Look". Nevertheless the workmanship of all these is distinctly good, and what is better, the high seriousness of the verse and the evident sincerity of the prose are joined to subject matter of enough interest and importance to seize even a careless reader. One would like to see in McLane's "Nocturne" reminiscences of Sappho, so simple and clear are the picture and the mood reflected therein. Other excellent verses, including two sonnets, some capital book reviews, and an amusing story, "Dolcezzo e Luce in Boston", which touches in desirable fashion on the province of the Lampoon, lend variety and breadth of view to the number.

One misses, perhaps, something in the nature of the essay. What has become of the periodical slam at the Classics--or the teachers of them, for the Classics themselves are impregnable--which we seem to remember in ante-bellum days? Yet the crisp editorials attest the power to produce the essay. A typical one, on the S. A. T. C., if rather one-sided and possibly even unfair, rigorously expresses what most of us think about the relation between College and the Government; and the reverent and discerning words of the editors on Theodore Roosevelt recall his connection, while in College, with the Advocate.