"varsity" Vices

The following somewhat over drawn article was left with us by a tramp newspaper writer, one of the few remaining Bohemians, of gooc education, but with bad drinking habits. He is responsible also for the somewhat startling head: But little more than a score oi years since, say a quarter of a century, the writer matriculated at a University of venerable and historie antecedents in one of the older states. With the average preparation of good home and training, and carefully inculcated sense of personal honor and responsibility (always and everywhere high in this our country, [ am glad to know), I was prepared to be shocked by and avoid share in thepranks of my fellow-students. Of course,the freemasonry of youth soon made me foremost amongpromoters, and I recall with a " sad dog" sort of feeling, that I developed exceptional ingenuity in the development or origination of novel forms of what venerable "Profs." and staid towns:olk were wont to term deviltry. Well, after all, what did it consist of ? As a rule, nothing worse than untimely serenades, more distinjuished for clamor than melody, on special occasions transposition of a doctor's for an undertaker's sign, or an odd practical joke upon some member of the faculty or classmate; a "rush" or perhaps a hazing with rather serious results, at times by mischance. Well, here in Ann Arbor, whose University so justly claims coeval mportance with her older sisters, one looks and inquires in vain for evidences of similar disturbing and obnoxious features of levity among the youth in attendance. The explanation would not be difficult to find, nor indeed sought at all, were it not for the persistent and certainly malignant efforts made from many quarters to misrepresent the young men of this great institution, as continuously and success;ully occupied in disturbing the )eace of the community, and subverting the purposes of their temporary residence in it. I must candidly confess that tangible evidence of such conditions wholly fails to reward diligent quest for it. My comrades of the campus long ago, though as a rule able to draw on long purses were habitually in debt to tailors, jewelers and all manner of tradesmen, and from this fact aróse a large measure of the antipathy between the college and the town. Here diligent inquiry establishes the fact that no appreciable measure of complaint on this score las any basis. Most of our fellows had financial support behind them of a kind and extent which up to a certain limit made negligence and frivolity safe ïf not judicious. A most notable and important contrasting condition here is created by the facts that the annual accessions to the rolls of this splendid institution are not only cosmopolitan, but drawn from the ïomes of the people, not the isolated palaces of the wealthy and distinguished, but from the workshop, the grocery counters, the humble country doctor's or lawyer's or dentist's office, from any and everywhere where talent, genius or ambition exist, and crave a means of development, however lowly or obscure he place or person. It is gratifying to its friends and of unmeasurable value to its usefulness that this great University is not yet "fashionable". May the day when it is to become so be long deferred ín its own interest, and that of the nation's higher education of which it has so rapidly become a prominent factor. It is a real pleasure to learn, and an augury of increasing and inestimable success, that the benefits and opportunities of the University of Michigan are not in any relative or comparative sense costly. It is well for its prosperity and the cause of learning that a modest and generally prevalent plan of living is the vogue and that "plungers" are rare, and without the emulous following which so often leads to ruin and disgrace as I have numerous and pitiful reasons to recall. It would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of this fact. The economies and sacrifices so cheerfully made by fond parents to give to hope of the house an educational equipment for the battle of life, are too often, or were too often in my time neutralized, indeed brought to naught by the seemingly forced necessity on the part of their boy to maintain the pace of a fast set at college so far as I can learn by diligent inquiry and observation, temptation or embarrasment of this kind must here be self sought and then difficult to find. ft is not the fashion or the vogue to "plunge" in Ann Arbor,and persons of that disposition will find plethoric purses no passport to the more seect and desirable homes and social cirles of the classic little city unless supplemented by character and worth. The college standard of title to gentlemanhood is a high one, and those enjoying generally conceded rank here need not fear its being questioned anywhere. That the college cry is heard at times, till the weikin rings I am glad to know and say. That its volume and force may continuouly swell and increase is to be desired, particularly by the commercial residents and property owners of a town which owes its chief prominence to the presence of the cryers. No vicious purpose lurks behind the "yell" and none is designed to follow it. After passing in review tolerably intímate acquaintance with conditions in a quartette of prominent University towns and cities, I feel quite secure from contradiction in stating that Ann Arbor has more ground for congratulation on the character and conduct of its student population than any one of them and I have no hesitation in saying their loss or removal would not by any other seat of learning be so disastrously feit.