this.all that springs from the college hall, it might
be doubted whether the four precious years in col
lege is the period in which to promote good feUow
ship. But in the “Commons” idea are found more
valuable agencies. It helps to win athletic victories
by unifying the college sentiment into an invisible
whole. It promotes life friendship with all sorts and
conditions of men, friendships which old graduates
confess are so helpful in later years. It develops a
broader culture by placing the student in harmonious
and intimate relations with his mates. In a score
of ways will the student be rounded and polished,
if with discretion he follows in paths which the free
dom of a social center provides. The social converse
with friends, the keen incentive to seek the sources
of power, and the unwritten laws of gentlemanly
conduct will widen a man’s vision, train his char
acter, and refine his tastes.
'See Rome and die,” some one has said. The average person
o knows or cares nothing about ancient history would probably
t as soon spend a week in New York or Pittsburg as in Rome,
that person may be highly intellectual. In the Amulet for
iuary there appears a good essay on “Observations of Nature,”
: passage of which we reproduce:
■ When we can not admire the beauties of art, it
does not indicate any degree of intellectual inferi
ority, but it simply implies that those who see the
beauties of 'art are 'interested in art,, and have
trained themselves as artists should be trained.
Man only sees the aspect of those things to which
he actively directs himself. The eyes are discreet
servants; they tell us • only what we want to know.
We may want to know the hour, and we look at the
clock, or we may look at the sky to see whether it!
will rain. If I am careless about the time, 1 may
look at the clock alid not even see the time it marks,
or I may look at the sky and read no forecast of the
weather. So in art, the artist trains his eye, and sees