A country of great myths, great glories, great reverses, of magic places and friendly hands, of credulous minds and passionate heartsthat is the Sicily as the wheeling centuries have painted it, and as we who wander there find it even now. Progress has left its heart untouched. The old glory has given a golden glamor to the air, the old poetry a singing voice to the wind.

And from the sea there rise, and from the sky
There fall, clear exhalations, soft and bright,
Veil after veil, each hiding some delight,
Which Sun or Moon or Zephys draw aside,
'Till the isle's beauty, like a naked bride
Glowing at once with love and loveliness,
Blushes and trembles at its own excess;
Yet, like a buried lamp, a soul no less
Burns in the heart of this delicious isle,
An atom of the Eternal, whose own smile
Unfolds itself and may be felt, not seen,
O'er the gray rocks, blue waves, and forests green,
Filling their bare and void interstices.

O, I'LL BE THERE AT THE MERRY-MAKING.

O, I'll be there at the merry-making,

Your beautiful wedding day.

'Tis I will listen the oaths you're taking,

And no one will guess that my heart is breaking,
That merry I'll be and gay.

'T is I'll be there at the peep o' dawn

In my coat with the velvet braid,

I'll stay by the drink till the last is drawn,

I'll dance with the girls on the slope of the lawn,

And I'll sit with a few in the shade.

'T is me with the fiddle in hand you'll see

By the light of the yellow moon,

The sweet serenade you'll be hearing from me,
And the heartiest shout in the gay shivaree,
On the night of your wedding, aroon.

Ah, 't is I will be living forever forlorn
And weeping the dark day long.
But tho' I be wishing I'd ne'er been born,
'T is I will be there on your wedding morn
With a laugh, and a dance, and a song!

Richard John Walsh.

Editorial.

All is transitory. The very mountains crumble, the plains, like a restless sleeper, raise here a shoulder, there a knee unexpectedly heavenward, islands disappear, from north to south manMidyears ners and customs are altered, even the Elective System wanes in the light of a deeper understanding-only the Midyears, with Juggernautian relentlessness, press down upon us, and will not swerve. In the eternal flux we have one anchor. Methods of attacking our formidable enemy may vary with the generations, tutors and printed notes may flourish for a day and wither, our enemy is invulnerable. Morituri te salutamus!

This is, indeed, a perilous time of year. The pleasant glow of Christmas festivities is behind us. The fiery furnace of the Midyears is before us. Instructors grow hard, theses wax plentiful, conferences rise like mushrooms, in apparently innocent courses. Now, dreams of Bermuda and Egypt come upon us. We would be far away with a pipe on a shelving beach and a warm wind blowing over a placid sea. Our hands itch for the tiller or the reins.

Midyears is a time created for the exercise of our conscience and our long dormant energy. To most of us hour examinations have lost their awe, it takes a mighty blow to stir us from our long slumber. Our misdeeds rise before us, our energy rises with them. The Reign of Terror sheds a momentary gloom over Mount Auburn Street, the brilliantly illumined Yard is dumb and depressed. But, O, for the joy of the long weeks afterwards, before new troubles come!

It is good that we should be reminded now and then why we are really here. We forget so easily, as we loll in our comfortable armchairs or bustle about in the service of the "outside interests" by which our undergraduate greatness is measured, that we are juggling with a very precious opportunity. Whatever our profession or trade is to be, we have the chance here of acquiring certain facts and certain impressions for which our future work, whatever its field, will be the greater and richer.

Let it console us through the dark weeks of grinding that, perchance, the time we spend at our immeasurably dull avocation of study is not all wasted.

A friend
Departs

When the present issue appears, the Visiting Professor from Germany will have ended his work in Cambridge, and will have started on his return to his home university. During his four months' sojourn, Professor Kühnemann has made a deep and durable impression on faculty and undergraduates. The most enthusiastic prophecies concerning his power and usefulness have been more than fulfilled. Professor Kühnemann has shown us how great and broad can be the humanizing influence of an exchange of professors between two kindred nations. In his own personality and work he has answered the question, "Is the interchange of professors between Germany and America a success?" As we see him depart after his brief period of whole-hearted, enthusiastic working among us, we assert with conviction that most decidedly it is.

To many undergraduates whose work has lain in other fields, Professor Kühnemann is only a name, to many he is only the brilliant orator, the deep scholar, the man of strong convictions and over

bubbling vitality, whose astounding alertness of mind and command of language, English as well as German, has stirred them to a deeper appreciation of German literature and German ideals than they had ever felt. To a few, he has been more than that—a man of unvarying kindliness, generous in his service of others, appreciative of the least service done to him; a man of deep feeling and noble intuitions.

In four months Professor Kühnemann has become a loyal son of Harvard. As he departs, he takes with him our gratitude, our best wishes and our sincere hopes for a speedy return.

Barvard

and the

Modern Drama

Theatre-goers and all others interested in the acted modern drama have noticed with astonished delight the sudden improvement this fall in the general run of the plays produced on the American stage. Plays, such as "The Great Divide," which old-fashioned managers dared not touch, have been produced, and received with enthusiasm by critics and public. The best form of modern English drama of Jones and Pinero has drawn exceptional houses, and the poetic drama, from Shakespeare down, has made a place for itself in the hands of Mr. Sothern and Miss Marlowe from which it will be hard to dislodge it. The public is beginning dimly to realize that it is weary of the pink and white emotions and wants the red. Fortunately, dramatists are coming up who have the backbone and the technique to supply the demand.

It is interesting that three of the plays conspicuous in this new tendency are by recent graduates of Harvard-"The Great Divide," by William Vaughn Moody, '93, "The Shulamite," by Edward Knoblauch, '96, and "Jeanne d'Arc," by Percy MacKaye, '97. Each of these