tween administrative officers and students, I give you a dialogue that occurred in a strong Quaker college. "Jones," said the president, who wastes few words, "I have reason to believe thee is a thief and a liar." "No, Mr. President," said Jones, "I am a liar; but I am not a thief." (It is interesting, by the way, to consider where this leaves Jones.) Above all things, a college officer should try not to be the kind of man of whom the late Dr. Carroll Everett said, "He presents different aspects of a truth to different persons." I cannot say with Mark Twain that I know honesty to be the best policy because I have tried both; but I know it to be the best policy because I have seen both. In a college that employs no spies, the student himself is treated as the greatest living authority on his own conduct; and, when he is questioned about it, he is expected, as a gentleman, to tell the truth. "Is it fair," people sometimes ask, "this

expecting a man to bear witness against himself?" Much fairer than expecting others to bear witness against him. He understands the right of the college to call him to account. Again and again I have marvelled at the frankness of students when squarely asked what they have or have not done, at the persistency of the feeling that, even if they have cheated more or less, they cannot, as gentlemen, lie when talking face to face. Of course there are exceptions, often in part the fault of the college officer or the result of his want of tact; yet in general, the frankness of students, even in bad things, is refreshing. Not long since, a man whose college work was done but who had not yet his degree said to me, "I must leave this place. I have got in with fellows who have more money than I and live more expensively than I; and I have taken to drinking. I must get out into the country." "Temptation," as Thackeray says, "is an ob

sequious servant, who has no objections to the country;" but this man's immediate temptation lay among certain city associates. "I had been drinking too much," said another student, "and when the proctor spoke to me I think I insulted him. I don't know what I said; I only know that at the time it appeared to me amusing." Another student, who wished to go away for a recess a day earlier than the college rules allowed, remarked, "It's only cutting one lecture." When I explained the difficulty of keeping men till the end of the term, and the principle involved in letting a single one go, he exclaimed, "But the lecture's in such a darned silly course!" an improper remark, no doubt; yet the fact that he spoke out went far toward making up for the impropriety.

Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson once said of his own college days. that a student seen walking with an instructor lost caste at once. There. has

been no more important change in college life of late than the change in the relation of student and instructor. In nearly every respect the struggle for an honest and friendly relation must be successful; but success comes slowest and most doubtfully in questions of honesty in written work. Even here a person whose written work is dishonest may be perfectly straightforward in confessing what he has done,- might go to the stake rather than deny it. The discouraging thing is that he should do it at all. Equally discouraging is his defence. He admits that, looked at critically, he has missed an educational opportunity; but the loss is his only, and need not worry the Faculty if detected, he cannot expect credit for his composition; but to suspend him is monstrous. He himself affirms that he did what everybody does; that he "had to hand in something," was not well, and was short of time; that his name on the theme is a mere

label, quite non-committal as to the question of authorship; perhaps that he copied from a book which the instructor "could not help knowing," and that therefore he could mean no deceit (he "agreed with Thackeray's ideas and could not improve on his language "). He adds that he learned to "crib" at school. Soon he is reinforced by a father who assures the Dean that the young man is the very soul of honor, and that this "breach of the rules" is the thoughtlessness of a mere boy, which will never show itself again. Like many students not interested in their studies, he fails to see, first, that the greater part of the dishonesty of the world, except that of professionally dishonest persons, whom we, since we deal with amateurs, may disregard, is committed by men under pressure, by men who feel that they have not time or resources for honesty; and he fails also to see the danger of fooling with his standard of truth. Suppose