ierce in between the joints of the armor. If
not, it may rebound upon the archer. I make the venture, promising
that I shall not follow the example of that President of Harvard who
died of a broken heart, because, according to Cotton Mather, he "FELL
UNDER THE DISPLEASURE OF CERTAIN GOOD MEN WHO MADE A FIGURE IN THAT
NEIGHBORHOOD."

As it may never again happen to me to be writing about colleges, I
desire to say in this paper everything I have to say on the subject,
and therefore take this opportunity to refer to the practice of
"hazing," although it is but remotely connected with Class-Day. If we
should find it among hinds, a remnant of the barbarisms of the Dark
Ages, blindly handed down by such slow-growing people as go to mill
with their meal on side of the saddle and a stone on the other to
balance, as their fathers did, because it never occurred to them to
divide the meal into two parcels and make it balance itself, we should
be surprised; but "hazing" occurs among boys who have been accustomed
to the circulation of ideas, boys old enough and intelligent enough
understand the difference between brutality and frolic, old enough to
know what honor and rage mean, and therefore I cannot conceive how they
should countenance a practice which entirely ignores and defies honor,
and which not a single redeeming feature. It has neither wisdom nor
wit, no spirit, no genius, no impulsiveness, scarcely boyish mirth. A
narrow range of stale practical jokes, lighted up by no gleam of
originality, seems to be transmitted from year to year with as much
fidelity as the Hebrew Bible, and not half the latitude allowed to
clergymen of the English Established Church. But besides its
platitude, its one over-powering and fatal characteristic is its
intense and essential cowardice. Cowardice is its head and front and
bones and blood. One boy does not single out another boy of his own
weight, and take his chances in a fair stand-up fight. But a party of
Sophomores club together in such numbers as to render opposition
useless, and pounce upon their victim unawares, as Brooks and his
minions pounced upon Sumner, and as the Southern chivalry is given to
doing. For sweet pity's sake, let this mode of warfare be monopolized
by the Southern chivalry.

The lame excuse is offered, that it does the Freshmen good,--takes the
conceit out of them. But if there is any Class in College so divested
of conceit as to be justified in throwing sto