Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 8.djvu/79

 Easy Chair.

��6S

��were established which I have quoted. We can see in them the evident origin or occasion of hazing the Freshmen, which would naturally follow such rules. At the present day, be it known, the custom has entirely ceased. The Freshmen of to-day are treated like gentlemen by all classes. All the students are placed on their honor, in every way, save only in some necessary particulars. Hazing has passed into history as a barbarous custom of the past, and the deportment of the students to-day is that of gentlemen, with very rare exceptions, such as might be expected among so large a number. In the great Memorial Hall, where they eat, the best of deportment

��is always to be seen, and everywhere there is now a pride, in all departments of the University, in observing the pro- prieties of good conduct. Indeed this has always been the rule. The hazing has never been so extensively practised as many have supposed; and no body of men can anywhere be found, in Congress, legislatures, schools, acade- mies, or colleges, whose deportment excels in excellence that of the students, of Harvard University. This observa- tion is demanded from the fact that many parents, some of whom are known the writer, have decided to send sons to other institutions, on the very ground of the influence of college customs and habits.

��EASY CHAIR.

By Elbridge H. Goss.

��This is an age of magazines. Every guild, every issue, has its monMily or quarterly. If a new athletic exercise should be evolved to-morrow, a new magazine, in its interest, would follow; and there seems to be a field for every new venture.

Among our older magazines. Harper's "New Monthly" still pursues its popu- lar course. In June, 1850, 1 bought the first number, and from that day to this it has been one of my household treas- ures. A complete set, sixty nine (69) volumes, forms a most excellent library in itself; a fair compendium of the world's history for the last thirty odd years.

��Story, essay, and event, has filled these sixty thousand pages. In October, 185 1, the department called the "Editor's Easy Chair," was established by Donald G. Mitchell, the genial "Ik: Marvel." Here are his first words :

"After our more severe Editorial work is done — the scissors laid in our drawer, and the monthly record, made as full as our pages will bear, of history — we have a way of throwing ourselves back into an old red-back Easy Chair, that has long been an ornament of our dingy office, and indulging in an easy, and careless overlook of the gossiping papers of the day, and in such chit chat

�� �