uffer them with Spartan courage, as the benefits he receives
should repay him an hundredfold for them all. The life of the debating
society is a handy antidote to the life of the class-room and
quadrangle. Nothing could be conceived more excellent as a weapon
against many of those _peccant humours_ that we have been railing
against in the jeremiad of our last "College Paper"--particularly in the
field of intellect. It is a sad sight to see our heather-scented
students, our boys of seventeen, coming up to College with determined
views--_roues_ in speculation--having gauged the vanity of philosophy or
learned to shun it as the middle-man of heresy--a company of determined,
deliberate opinionists, not to be moved by all the sleights of logic.
What have such men to do with study? If their minds are made up
irrevocably, why burn the "studious lamp" in search of further
confirmation? Every set opinion I hear a student deliver I feel a
certain lowering of my regard. He who studies, he who is yet employed in
groping for his premises, should keep his mind fluent and sensitive,
keen to mark flaws, and willing to surrender untenable positions. He
should keep himself teachable, or cease the expensive farce of being
taught. It is to further this docile spirit that we desire to press the
claims of debating societies. It is as a means of melting down this
museum of premature petrifactions into living and impressionable soul
that we insist on their utility. If we could once prevail on our
students to feel no shame in avowing an uncertain attitude towards any
subject, if we could teach them that it was unnecessary for every lad to
have his _opinionette_ on every topic, we should have gone a far way
towards bracing the intellectual tone of the coming race of thinkers;
and this it is which debating societies are so well fitted to perform.

We there meet people of every shade of opinion, and make friends with
them. We are taught to rail against a man the whole session through, and
then hob-a-nob with him at the concluding entertainment. We find men of
talent far exceeding our own, whose conclusions are widely different
from ours; and we are thus taught to distrust ourselves. But the best
means of all towards catholicity is that wholesome rule which some folk
are most inclined to condemn,--I mean the law of _obliged speeches_.
Your senior member commands; and you must take the affirmative or the
negative, just as suits his best convenience.