NAER BOSTON!

In a pile of stray mail at University 4 the other day, lay a letter with a foreign stamp in the corner, addressed: "Monsieur J--R--, Belgian student, Harvard University, naer Boston." Somewhere in Belgique a country mam'selle, after struggling heroically to recall that strange address, "Cam----Camb" had given up the attempt, and, putting her faith in the God of Chance and the United States Post Office, had written what she could remember, "naer Boston".

Cambridge is indeed near Boston. No longer is Harvard a country college with kine grazing on the adjacent common (see any old wood cut); no longer is Cambridge a tiny village more than a mile to the east, and Boston a full two hours away. In short Harvard is no longer splendidly isolated and dependent upon her own resources, but instead in addition to them the student may draw upon those of Boston as well. Museums, public libraries, and theatres, perhaps with most of the emphasis on the last, now play a large part in undergraduate life and add materially to the meaning, the deeper connotation of the modern college course.

Yet in spite of this great increase in the facilities, in spite of all modern conveniences, there arises now and then the lament for the good old days; the complaint that student life is not what it used to be. One such article in a recent number of the "Graduates Magazine" points out the sad lack of private libraries among students, and the resulting traffic in second hand textbooks which flourishes on the Square. The undergraduate no longer dines in quiet with a few "kindred spirits", nor sits comfortably before a bed of coals glowing in his small grate. Instead he rushes from the clattering dishes of some restaurant or lunch room to the bustle of competition or athletic field, and later after a pleasant evening elsewhere he returns to his room too tired to do anything but crawl into bed.

In short instead of learning to depend on himself, on his books and his friends for diversion, he goes to the theatre or a dance; all because there are subways to carry him thither, and because those same subways have brought people out to him and turned the little village into a large city which has swept around the old Yard and gone beyond.

Yet such a change is by no means regretable. The increased possibilities, the easy access to Boston have not changed all the old customs. Rooms still portray personality whether it be through cards on the floor and "Life" on the table or by etchings, old prints and Maxfield Parrish. There are too, here and there, private libraries and even secluded and picturesque "eating houses", if one cares to seek them out.

The only change is one of option. Now the undergraduate is not forced upon his own company. He may be famous in Cambridge, or in Boston, and later write articles of his own on "the good old days". Or he may find his interest and his pleasure in books and the well known background, as was "necessary" in the past. Whichever is his choice the sole difference is that now it can be carried farther.