for cause in the civil service really means not only to remove for a penal
offence, but for habits and methods that destroy discipline and efficiency.
So to keep the peace in a college means to remove the necessary causes of
disturbance and disorder. If young Sardanapalus, by his extravagance and
riotous profusion and dissipation, constantly thwarts the essential purpose
of the college, demoralizing the students and obstructing the peaceful
course of its instruction, he ought to be dismissed. The college must judge
the conditions under which its work may be most properly and efficiently
accomplished, and to achieve its purpose it may justly limit the liberty of
its students.

The solution of the difficulty lies more in the power of the students than
of the college. If the young men who are the natural social leaders make
simplicity the unwritten law of college social life, young Sardanapalus
will spend his money and heap up luxury in vain. The simplicity and good
sense of wealth will conquer its ostentation and reckless waste.

(_October_, 1886)




BRAINS AND BRAWN


It is towards the end of June and in the first days of July that the great
college aquatic contests occur, and it is about that time, as the soldiers
at Monmouth knew in 1778, that Sirius is lord of the ascendant. This year
it was the hottest day of the summer, as marked by the mercury in New York,
when the Harvard and Yale men drew out at New London for their race. Fifty