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for a period of two years before applying. The interval might be spent in business, in a Western town, in teaching elsewhere, in study, either abroad or at another college, or in travel. The main thing is distance and time which will give a man perspection on his college. Let him, if possible, swing entirely clear of academics for a while, before he returns. Perhaps he will not care to return. If so, so much the better. He will have found it out in time. If he does return, it will be with a power of intelligent discrimination between the false standards and true; a more temperate appreciation of the virtues of the institution, a more just discernment of defects, and a clearer head generally. He will have ceased to regard the voice of tradition as the voice of law; he will be able to see glaring blemishes on undergraduate life without wilfully shutting his eyes while he learns to call them by another name; he will be capable of giving a Freshman unworldly advice and of dealing candidly with Seniors on a basis of a larger experience than theirs. No matter what freshness and enthusiasm the make-shift teacher may carry to his work, if he proceeds on a continued academic system with foreign travel or tutoring during the summer, he is, at best, only two or three years ahead of the men he instructs. But a change of occupation; a different angle on life; a new place as a basis of reflection on the old, is magical for shifting things into their proper relations. It does not seem to have occurred to most of us, for instance, that by stepping behind the counters of many a Cambridge shop, or even by a short trip across the Cambridge Bridge, we might get new and valuable information regarding Harvard College. The men who came back from a "two-year" test of this sort would have been tried out at other things. They would be men capable of standing on their own legs, independently of academic stilts; they would be twice as valuable. And if by that time they really wished to teach, it is likely that they would prefer to teach at Harvard College.

The reductio ad absurdum of the present system has come, of course, in the appointment of undergraduate assistants, for, while the general inappropriateness had all along been felt in a vague way, this last item made it possible to lay the finger on the special absurdity.

Even granting the financial obstacles to securing the men wanted by the college, the authorities might wait until a man gets his degree. On the part of the Seniors whose papers and examination books are being marked by a classmate there is an instant tendency to take the course less seriously. This may be to the student a disappointment or a relief. In either case it is a detriment. A man will write two very different examination books for his classmate and his professor. Even Juniors are worldly enough to grasp such a distincton. And although it is conceivable that an extra year may not greatly add to the efficiency of the assistant, a year adds materially to the respect in which he is held by undergraduates.

The suggestions which have been made are not offered as "reforms." The writers are fully aware of the fertility of off-hand proposals from undergraduates to settle difficulties with which their superiors have struggled earnestly and often in vain. In view of the discussion, however, which has been aroused by recent editorial comment on this topic, it is possible that a few remarks, not so much personal as selected from various expressions of opinion among undergraduates, may help to clear the air. Let us remember that the difficulties in the way of a change will probably be dealt with by the college as wisely and rapidly as circumstances will permit, but at the same time let us be no less candid in acknowledging the desirability. of such a change.

Lucien Price.
Horton Ijams.

TSCHAIKOWSKY*

Out of the north, from the bitter field,
Where the sun is gray and the wind is keen,
Where men strive over the lean earth's yield
(Apples of dust it has ever been),
Out of the north, where a thousand years
Have bent my people beneath the yoke,

I came as one from purer spheres,

To sing the song of the Russian folk.

Through the centuries, in their fathers' way They have sung at the spring and harvest tide,

And at village feasts in the flush of May

Danced at the door of the new-made bride, And I who caught from their lilting wild Melodies strange, and old, and sweet,

The cradle song of a sleepy child,

The hurried cadence of dancing feet,

The peasant's love song upon the hills,
The shrill blood-chantings of battles past,

The fireside saga that stirs and thrills,

I gave them forth to the world at last.

I chanted their beauty till nations came

And harked to my music 'mid smiles and tears,

But my work was all in my people's name,
To cheer their hearts in the evil years.

* Awarded Lloyd McKim Garrison Prize, 1907.

Years when the famine was on the land,

And my people fell at their work and died,
When the masters smote with a heavy hand,
When the children hungered and were denied;
They cried aloud from the barren earth,

Stretching their hands to the God unknown;
I listened to them in the time of dearth,
And made their song of despair my own.

My soul became as the souls in pain,

Who sing lest their chastened spirits break, A song, half heard, like the wind and rain, All sorrowful. And within me spake

A will not mine, so I sang, full-toned,

. The pitiful music to God and men,
Till the sound swept up to the Light enthroned,
And star-like fell to the earth again.

A singer lone from the troubled north,
I taught all peoples to understand
As my country's soul I bodied forth,

Till they gave me honor with open hand,

But my heart went out to those who sing

With heads bowed down to the tempest stroke, And their joy was mine and their suffering.

I have sung the song of the Russian folk.

Robert Emmons Rogers.

THE YOUNG INSTRUCTOR

The young instructor or assistant who has sprung up in American colleges during the last decade, like some sort of mushroom institution, has been the subject of considerable discussion at Harvard in Lampoon cartoons, as well as in the editorial columns of the MONTHLY. At present he bids fair to continue, with yearly reinforcements from each graduating class in his allotted and important task. The questions, Why is he here? What is he? What are the results of his being here, bad or good? are worth examination.

He is here because the President and Fellows, confronted with the problem of handling enormous classes with the minimum of expenditure, believe him to be the most expedient and natural instrument. Furthermore, his qualifications lie in the fact that, as in other colleges, the young instructor, who so recently has done presumably able work, knows his course and is interested therein. Much indeed may be here contradicted in practice as in all departments of life-this may be called the ideal. Moreover, his appointment in most cases is not made upon the basis of scholarship alone, though of course scholarship is a factor.

The young instructor, moreover, is always a man who has his A.B. (sometimes, though rarely, he is a Senior on leave waiting to take his A.B. with his class). Often he is working for his Ph.D. or Law School degree and teaching incidentally to help himself along. Again, the older of the young instructors are more or less recent Ph.D.'s who teach as a profession. In many instances, though, his official work is not primary to him, and the danger that he give too little time to thoroughness rests with his own conscience.

There are, roughly speaking, three classes: one consists of the men who run sections and mark papers, or who hold conferences and mark papers; the other, of men who simply mark and comment in

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