k, since the present policy of recruiting was
originated and is conducted largely by the Second Vice-President.

* * * * *

=Ole Miss'= for December is the most important of all recent additions
to amateur letters, and it is with regret that we learn of the
magazine's prospective discontinuance. The issue under consideration is
largely local, most of the contributions being by Mississippi talent,
and it must be said that the contributors all reflect credit upon their
native or adopted State.

Mr. J. W. Renshaw's page of editorials is distinguished equally by good
sense and good English. His attitude of disapproval toward petty
political activities and fruitless feuds in the United is one which
every loyal member will endorse, for nearly all of the past disasters in
amateur history have been caused not by serious literary differences,
but by conflicting ambitions among those seeking no more than cheap
notoriety.

Mrs. Renshaw is well represented both by prose and by verse, the most
interesting of her pieces being possibly the essay entitled "Poetic
Spontaneity", wherein more arguments are advanced in her effort to prove
the inferior importance of form and metre in poesy. According to Mrs.
Renshaw, the essence of all genuine poetry is a certain spontaneous and
involuntary spiritual or psychological perception and expression;
incapable of rendition in any prescribed structure, and utterly
destroyed by subsequent correction or alteration of any kind. That is,
the bard must respond unconsciously to the noble impulse furnished by a
fluttering bird, a dew-crowned flower, or a sun-blest forest glade;
recording his thoughts exactly as evolved, and never revising the
result, even though it be detestably cacophonous, or absolutely
unintelligible to his less inspired circle of readers. To such a theory
as this we must needs reply, that while compositions of the sort
indicated may indeed represent poesy, they certainly represent art in
its proper sense no more than do "futuristic" pictures and other modern
monstrosities of a like nature. The only exact means whereby a poet may
transmit his ideas to others is language, a thing both definite and
intellectual. Granting that vague, chaotic, dissonant lines are the best
form in which the tender suitor of the Muses may record his spiritual
impressions for his own benefit and comprehension, it by no means
follows that such lines are at all fitted to conve