The footsteps in the corridor stopped at the Boy's cell, the flickering candles of the monks darting curious shadows over the gray walls. The Boy turned, his face radiant.

"I have been granted a vision," he cried, triumphantly. "And I have heard the heavenly voices."

Hermann Hagedorn, Jr.

THE HARVARD STORY.

This season has lacked the usual supply of college stories; but those that have appeared are in a way significant. Mr. Owen Wister's Philosophy Four is important as showing what can be done with the college story; The Land of Joy, by Ralph Henry Barbour, and The Torch, by Herbert M. Hopkins, as showing, in a rather back-handed fashion, what can not be done with the college novel. "Back-handed," I say, because they do it by their outright dodging of the question. The first leaves a carefully labelled Harvard atmosphere half way through the book for the less impossible South; and the second deals with the faculty of a State University rather than the students. They seem to admit, practically, the impossibility of writing a college novel. They use college life as a background, a mere stage-setting, but not as material for the plot.

Such, in fact, is the conclusion that one is almost forced to, if experience is any test. For the experiment is by no means new. In 1869 Mr. Washburn produced Fair Harvard; in 1878 Mr. Severance, Hammersmith. Four years later Mr. Stinson published Guerndale. Then the famous Rollo's Journey. Since then came Mr. Post's Stories, Mr. Hubbard's somewhat unpleasant Forbes of Harvard, Mr. Flandrau's Episodes and Diary of a Freshman, Mr. Kaufmann's Jarvis of Harvard, and lastly Mr. Johnson's The Cult of the Purple Rose. Of these a few of us have heard of Guerndale, fewer of Hammersmith, and fewer still of Fair Harvard. Of the latter books we have most of us read and concluded not to take too seriously, Jarvis of Harvard and The Cult of the Purple Rose. They evidently do not comprise a "body of literature." In fact, the only ones that we can claim any interest in are Rollo's Journey, the Stories, and Mr. Flandrau's two books. That fact, if true, is rather striking. The larger, more pretentious books have failed; the mere stories have succeeded.

The explanation of this phenomenon-if it may be designated so grandly

—is fairly simple. To write a novel, one must, as a rule, have something to say. And as a rule there is extremely little to say about college in the form of a novel. One cannot construct a novel out of pictures or clever incidents. It must have some substance, and some single substance. A very common conception of the novel (today at least) is the story of a man and how he got him a wife. Or, more profoundly, it is the history of some human passion— it may be love, or pride, or ambition, or what you will. The main fact is that a novel must have some "human interest"; it must in some way be a picture of life.

"Life" we have at college, to be sure; but it is not novel-material life. Without necessarily posing as infants we may honestly confess ourselves learners of life, rather than its performers. We take our courses in Philosophy not because we are philosophers, but because we want to be-some of us. We take our courses in Mathematics (when we do) not because we expect help in our cash-accounts from the theory of quaternions, but because we want to get our minds into working order. We are simply in the position of getting ready. If we set out to make a team or a paper we do it not so much for the end itself, for the cap or shingle, as for the practice involved. We do not do it so consciously as that might imply, and occasionally it is hard to imagine that there is anything but intrinsic importance in the struggle for a place on a team; but the principle at the bottom of the whole institution is that same one-we are imitating life, not living it. However seriously we may take it, however much profit we get from it, it is all mere practice. That we get pleasure out of it, that there is no time in life (so they tell us) when we are so happy, that here we make our best friends—all this is a mere byeproduct, due to the fact that we are young and are thrown together in a healthy atmosphere of mutual interests. Our life is not a life at all; on that wellworn "stage of life" we are not the actors themselves, but their understudies.

That this is not good novel material it is hardly necessary to point out. We may be picturesque, individual, and full of sweet boyish pranks, but there is nothing in all that to excuse a novel. Start your hero here, if you must;

but you can never finish up a real story in an unreal atmosphere. Herein they have all failed. See Jarvis of Harvard; Mr. Kaufmann takes a few local names and places for "color" and then tries to build up a mature story on the misdeeds of a rather calfish Freshman. His failure was inevitable, however good his intentions. Tom Brown, to be sure, seems a standing objection to any such sweeping statement. But in reality he only proves it the more strongly. He was well managed, he was a real boy even before he got into the book, he had everything in his favor. And he made a story while he was in Rugby. But for some reason he was not so interesting after he got to Oxford. When he was young he was interesting as a small boy is interesting; but when he entered college he was just half way, neither boy nor man -and the result was not successful. The long line of less attractive failures is only to be expected.

The short story, on the other hand, is not barred out by the nature of our atmosphere. It is even encouraged. The very fact that the college world is an imitation makes it inevitable that it should be filled with little comedies, little tragedies and trivial things of interest. The field has been recognized with quite eagerness enough. No self-respecting college is now without its stories, a neat little book, usually, saved by local hits from being the exact duplicate of its predecessors. There is always the story of the great guard on the Blanky-Blank eleven who came up from the country and won the game and the most prominent debutante of the region; there is always one "pathetic" story; and always a dialogue by Juniors that sit around on pillowed divans, smoke, and talk epigrams. They are always illustrated with scenes of the "campus," filled with handsome athletic youths, small caps on their heads, hands in the pockets of very flappy trousers, and their coats carefully kept unbuttoned to show an enormous X on their besweatered bosoms. The type is too well known to need description--it is only the "student" in all his glory. Obviously it is not a very high standard of literature; but there is material enough for good short stories, and occasionally a set appears that justifies that belief.

In that field we have fared well. Rollo's experiences are classic; but

they do not throw much light on the future possibilities of the short storyhe unfortunately can come to us only once. And Mr. Post's Stories are attractive. But they are not very different from the regular type; they are collegiate, but not particularly "Harvardy." Mr. Flandrau, however, has accomplished a good deal, and his books are fairly indicative of what may be done with the short Harvard story. To begin with, his preface states the impossibility of representing the whole University--he writes only of "a very small corner of a very large place." Calling them Harvard stories is therefore not quite fair; it was due really to the publisher's more commercial point of view. But granting that practically inevitable fault, there is in them a good deal of positive value.

For one thing, Mr. Flandrau writes real stories. Take Wolcott the Magnificent. There are three, possibly four, well conceived and minutely drawn characters; their interplay makes the plot; and that has interest enough to justify its existence even without the local application. It is a microscopic edition of the old and actual misunderstanding between the born snob and the "other half." And it makes out a pretty good case for each. Wellington, too, differs from the usual pathetic story in having some unaffected natural tragedy in it. And The Class Day Idyl might draw a smile from even an outsider, though it is not up to the standard of the others. Clearly Mr. Flandrau has not been satisfied to rely on the usual patriotic self-flattery to assure a reception for his book. The Diary of a Freshman (which, by the way, is a series of short stories, not a novel), also has some claim to outside notice, though it was far less successful artistically. It is Mr. Flandrau's ability, chiefly, it is true, that makes so successful a treatment of college material possible; but his work does indicate what can be done by a clever workAnd it is in striking contrast to the long row of failures on the part of the college novel.

man.

One fault, however, harms all Mr. Flaudrau's work. He has, it is true, confined himself to giving the atmosphere of one particular corner of Harvard; but it is not fair to attribute the attitude of that corner to the rest of the college. "If the primitive custom," he writes, "in vogue, I believe, at