LULLABY Hear the wind, little child, hush low, Hush low, hear the wind, hear the sea. The wind and the waves are hurrying on, And night comes fast when the sun is gone. Nestle close, little one, to me, And hark!-Hear the wind, hear the sea. In my arms, little one, hush low, Hush low in my arms and be still. Away in the forest the were-wolf howls, And over the ocean a great storm growls, Little one, let them roar at will. Hush low, in my arms—and be still. Fear not, little one, hush low, Hush low, pretty one, go to sleep. For mother is singing thy slumber song, And mother is watching the whole night long, Her own little babe to keep. Hush low, little one-and sleep. ETHEL BARSTOW HOWARD. EDITORIAL "I put you on your honor to do this" is a phrase which one often hears and generally rebels at. Is this feeling merely an impotent revolt under an obligation which is in reality just and binding; or is it a warrantable state of indignation, based upon a real weakness and unfairness in the injunction? Properly every requirement offers an alternative. The very name requirement implies a possible contrary course. We may violate the natural laws of health, although we suffer for it. A man must not steal unless he is willing to forfeit his liberty, or murder unless he is willing to forfeit his life; but he may steal and he may murder. Excepting the impossible, there is nothing from which we are absolutely debarred, if we are ready to accept the consequences. But supposing it possible for one man to put another on his honor to do a thing, then there is no alternative. If he can do the thing, he must. Here there is no option of violation and penalty; it is a case of absolute necessity. The man without honor, of course, is not under discussion. In the nature of things he can have nothing to do with this question. But as for the honorable man, he is utterly defenseless in such a position. There is no limit to the arbitrary control which another may thus establish over him. It might be suggested that the power to put a man on his honor lies with those who have authority over him and with them. alone; but this again is open to objection. There is nothing more intimately and entirely a man's own than his honor; and to demand this on the ground of authority is as absurd as to demand his affection. No one surely would deny that there is such a thing as putting a man on his honor; but it is not done by the mere saying it. It never can be done without his consent. When you say, "I put you on your honor," you tacitly say, "I know that you would not do this otherwise, so I tell you that I rely upon you to do it, and you are under moral obligation not to fail me." You have no right to demand obedience of the stranger that you meet in the street; neither have you the right to force the loyalty, if the word may be used, of one who owes none to you. A compact, tacit or otherwise, is a thing not to be imposed, but agreed upon. Since a man can not be put upon his honor without some mutual agreement, it is above all an empty thing as well as an unwarrantable one, to try to bind an assemblage, in the nature of things defenseless, by the mere statement that you have put them on their honor. As much as any other, the person in a position of authority who attempts to do this demands a relation which he has no right to exact. He assumes the existence of a compact that has not been made, and does not offer the essential opportunity for refusal. Surely the honor of one man pledged to another is too sacred a thing to be forced into a position so artificial and false. EDITOR'S TABLE There are many kinds of snobbery; but the newest variety, and that to which our day and generation is particularly addicted, is the snobbery of poverty. The snobs of this order have passed by easy stages from crying shame upon the coward slave who hangs his head for honest poverty, to a point where they will scarcely suffer any one who is richer than themselves to hold up his head, and will far less allow that he is in any point their superior. In "Unleavened Bread" Judge Grant held up the glass to the public; and although no member of that public is willing to lay claim to the features mirrored there, we all admit that they bear a close resemblance to certain of our neighbors. In the current number of The Yale Literary Magazine there is reassuring proof that one, at least, of our neighbors is free from the taint of snobbery even in this, its most insidious form. "The Handicap" is the title of a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of working one's way through college. The fullest recognition is given to the moral and spiritual gain of those who fight their way through successfully. But we are reminded that there are some for whom the struggle is too severe, not only physically, but spiritually. And a man is better fitted to cope with life armed with a stout heart and a pickaxe than with an A. B. and a broken spirit. Neither the physical exertion necessary, however, nor the spiritual struggle is the chief difficulty in the way of the self-supporting student at Yale. They are more or less the same thing that he would have to meet in the world at large. But courage of heart and strength of body are not sufficient to overcome the disadvantage at which he is placed by the fact that art, literature, and music are as yet unrecognized by the curriculum. True, there are undergraduate institutions which have met with the encouragement and the coöperation of the faculty, and which purport to supplement the college course and to cultivate the field unoccupied by the curriculum. But these means of improvement are available only to such students as are unembarassed by outside demands on their time. It is this difficulty, of which we, with our liberal curriculum, can know little or nothing, that complicates the problem of self-support at college by bringing in the question as to whether that for which so many sacrifices are being made is really what we need and care for, after all. In the line of literary criticism, the Harvard Monthly contains an appreciation of "The Genius of Stephen Crane," which places his greatness in the keenness and the sympathetic quality of his observation, and in his exactness and sincerity in setting down what he saw, and gives as the cause of his limitation, his stern adherence to the realism that forbade him to look beyond or behind the physical phenomena of the moment. In the Columbia Literary Monthly, "The American Rejection of Poe" is an interesting and enthusiastic, though far from a complete or logical plea for the recognition of Poe as "the greatest bard of America." The best verse of the month is "The Calling of the River" in the Yale Literary Magazine. It is the revery of the Lady of Shallott, reincarnated as a young monk, and is interesting both in its similarity to and its difference from its prototype. "What lies beyond, whither the fishes swim, |