The sun., 1894-12-02

decent men 1t Harvard than at oxford There
were still left at oxford In the early sixties men
who held tho extraordinary doctrine that to
take bath oftener than onos week indicated
that one could not be clearly in his habits.
They reasoned thus: A farm laborer or a
drayman will naturally need to be scrubbed
daily. hut why should n gentleman require
Il? Another extraordinary notion which Mr..
IIil is carrying away with him is the fol-
lowing. Nowhere in the United States, I
am told, does n young man carry walking
stick II belongs there TO the evening OF life, ns
IL belonged in ancient Greece. An at
tempt has been lately made TO rointroduce II
into Harvard, probably by some undergraduate
who has been to England and noticed how in
our universities H. has become as Indispensable
a part Of the outfit for walking ns a hat. My
friend the senior, says that hitherto II has only
been under the cover OF night that he and his
friends have ventured TO carry a cane. I hope,
by the way. that they do carry II and do not
commit tho vuiRarty Of letting IL touch the
ground. as II It were Of any manner OF use TO
them" wc earnestly advise the author TO
drop my friend, the senior, and his friends"
considered as informants, and in future
editions Of this work to expurgste the so-cslled /
information derived from such sources. To,
them is seemingly duo the extraordinary short
comlngs III the chapter dealing with the social
clubs OF Harvard. Would II be believed that
Mr.. Hill IA unaware of the existence of tho
Institute Of l77O. though this, one might have
thought. might have been suggested TO him by
his recolections OF the oxford Union debating
society. The author seems also never to have
heard during his sojourn at Cambridge, amid
all his searchings after knowledge. OF such
societies rs the Hasty Pudding and the POr-
Cclian clubs.
Mr.. Hill should have guessed that he was
building on inadequate data the notion that the
average Harvard man would be more properly
compared to q national school teacher than to |
an Oxford undergraduate. lie himself states
two facts which are incompatible with his
assumption. He notes. for instance. that the |
rents of rooms in the Harvard dormitories far
higher than in the Oxford colleges a fact con-
elusive as to the social class from which the ten
ants are drawn. The rents at Harvard range |
from S25 to $3.50 n year, but In all the dormi-
tories put together there are only eighteen |
rooms for which tho charge Is 30 low ns $50. |
In the oxford colleges, on the other hand, the |
lowest rent is $1,000, and the average at Oriel |
is only S53sO. In Christ Church, the lowest
rent is less than $40 and the highest but sl37.
In Magdalen, even ia Gibbons stately pile"
not more than sos is charged: in the other col
leges. the rents are below this sum. To sum up.
in Harvard, 20o rooms arc rented more highly
than the dearest in oxford The same deduc.
tion to social anteccdents may be drawn
from the students food. The meals provided
nt Memorial Hall are. Of course, inferior to
those supplied at the best club tables. but they
arc far better than the ordinary commons fur
nished to those who dine in hall in the oxford
colleges Mr.. Hill notes with astonishment
among the items OF expenditure for Memorial
Hall $50 boxes of oranges. 1880 pounds
OF grapes, 500 pounds OF honey. and
900 tons OF ice. "The consumption of
ice." he says, "seems enormous In an