part escaped the football frenzy, which has proved so serious an obsession in many institutions. The attitude of the president, faculty and athletic management is for clean, simple athletics and diversified sports in which every student may have a share. In this way the absurd importance of football is diminished. The University is developing tennis, and this year has added the game of la-crosse to its list of sports, being the first university in the Mississippi Valley to do this.

Illinois is athletically clean. Last spring it ruled its five best players off its ball team for summer ball. It thereby lost the championship, but kept its athletic record untarnished. In a recent write-up of athletics in the West, which appeared in a popular magazine, Illinois alone among the big institutions escaped serious charges, not because of any tenderwriter, on the part of the writer, but because there were none to make. Much credit for this state of affairs is due to Director George Huff,-"G." as the boys affectionately call him.

ness

Mention of the new President of Illinois, Dr. Edmund J. James, has been reserved for the end of this article. He came to the University in the fall of 1904, and is an educator of pronounced achievement and wide reputation. He is an eminent scholar in economics, political and social science. He was educated at Northwestern, Harvard and Halle, Germany. For many years he was Professor of Public Finance and Administration at Pennsylvania. In 1896 he was elected Professor of Political Science in the University of Chicago, and while there had charge of the extension work.

In

1902 he was chosen President of Northwestern University. He was formally installed President of Illinois last October. The ceremonies on this occasion, which extended over nearly a week, brought together leading educators and men in prominence in various walks of life from all parts of this country and Europe as well. Dr. James's insight, energy, courage and devotion promise much for the institution of which he stands as the head.

The aspirations and ideals of the "New Illinois" can be expressed no better than in words taken from his inaugural address:

. Such

"The state university which most fully performs its function will stand simply, plainly, unequivocally and uncompromisingly for training for vocation. a training should and would result in the awakening of such ideals of service as would permeate, refine and elevate the character of the student. It would make him a scholar and investigator, a thinker, a patriot and an educated gentleThe state university will be essentially a democratic institution, as comprehensive as the population of the state itself.

man.

It will stand for the fullest opportunity in the field of higher education of women. It will create new opportunities for them in the field peculiar to them, i.e. the home

it will give a distinctively woman's course in the field of higher education. It is destined to be a great civil service academy, preparing for the civil service of the nation, state, county and town as clearly and definitely as West Point and Annapolis for military and naval service. . The state university is the scientific

HERE the village street, with

W its rows of ancient elms

a-line as for a stately contradance, reached out of breath the highest point of view, stood the White House on the Hill. I passed it twice a day on my way to and from school. In the morning I had no time to consider it, for panting and disheveled, with curls flying and hat flopping awry, I was always on the verge of tardiness. But when the day's lessons were over, and the children came straggling out by twos and threes, alone I could dally and wonder to my heart's content. The hollyhocks next door, inquisitive neighbors a-tiptoe behind the hedge, gave me the hint on my very first school day in Kimpton. I remember how I paused at the gate in the thorn. hedge, and with a curious thrill gazed up the little flagged path that led to the green door. The hollyhocks too gazed eagerly. What did they suspect behind that stolid front with its tarnished knocker?

Daisy Green, who sat next me in school and sought to patronize, found me gazing thus and pulled me by the sleeve of my gingham frock.

"Come away, Rhoda," she breathed in a stage whisper. "The Deacon don't like folks to peek at the White House."

"Who is the Deacon?" said I, tossing my curls and continucontinuing to peer. Something about

the half-closed shutters fascinated

me.

"Oh, he is the goodest man in town," she explained. "But he is queer, you know, and he don't like anybody to spy about the White House. He has collections, but nobody hasn't ever seen 'em.”

"Collections!". Ambiguous word which meant nothing to me then, though later I came to associate it. with the weekly offering of a pious congregation. Mysterious treasures that no one had seen! Here indeed was food for my fancy. Thenceforward no fairy prince ever eyed more longingly the hedge which bowered his sleeping princess than did I the barrier which separated me from the White House on the Hill.

Nay

It was a simple colonial house, hip-roofed and weather-beaten. But my fancy converted it into no less than Aladdin's palace, where who could say what wonders lay concealed? I heard of the Deacon buying "old things" with new ones,— sorry thrift in the eyes of Kimpton, but how significant to me! more, he had actually offered to give a new lamp out of Cramp's store for an ancient candelabra! Surely, a magician this. The villagers pooh-poohed; but I listened with the widened eyes of a deeper knowledge. Gossip said that the Deacon would have no visitors, fearing lest they should handle his rubbish. Naturally; would he risk

having a stranger "rub" one of his wonders by mistake, and perhaps send the White House travelling off into space, with the Deacon himself inside?

The Deacon was a small man, but his dignity and manner gave him an impressiveness beyond his stature. On Sundays he strode pompously down the aisle of the church, tapping the floor at each step with his ivory-headed cane, and I shuddered. The Deacon was not mysterious, but awful. He was fearfully and wonderfully good. The testimony to his saintliness was on every lip, Little though the gossips understood his strange interest in all things old, historic and obsolete, they could appreciate the rectitude of his life. They might call him cranky and odd,-some even thought him crazy. But all re spected him as a godly man.

I myself was far from being godly in the eyes of anyone. Fate had thrust me, orphaned, into the midst. of Kimpton's Puritanism, but I never became a part of it. Instinctively I rebelled not only against a Sunday service which offended. my taste, but against the village ideal of goodness, which I understood to be typified in Deacon Poole. I was, in fact, what my Aunt. called "a limb"; which I take to mean that I was always in disgrace, -always, justly or unjustly, being punished and dissolved in woe. The Deacon's saintliness was a constant reproach to my sinner soul. When, fearful event! I chanced to meet him on the village street I wilted Semele-like, before his glory and averted my gaze from his own, while my curls trembled violently under my leghorn hat. I was morbidly self-conscious, as

well as

naughty, and I fancied that the Deacon had a special disapproving eye upon me. He became the bugbear of my childhood, for he represented Judgment incarnate.

Some months after I came to Kimpton a dreadful thing happened. One night my Uncle came home from church meeting looking very grave, and later I overheard him telling my Aunt that the church had been robbed. The old silver communion cup, gift to the church from its first Puritan minister, had disappeared from the box where it was kept in a closet of the minister's room. Robbery was unprecedented in Kimpton, and my Uncle confessed that they had been careless enough, feeling secure in the honesty of the townsfolk. There was no clue to the thief.

When I heard this shocking news my first thought was not disgust for the enormity of the crime, but pity for the criminal. How would the culprit bear the Deacon's godly wrath when the secret was discovered! I shuddered in my innocent person at the idea.

The thought of the accusing Deacon haunted me through weeks of horror, long after the first excitement of the theft had subsided. The minister and his congregation were not sentimental, and relics as such. meant little to them. This was before the day of general antiquarian interest, and that historic cup, which had no fellow for age this side of the Atlantic, was valued only as so much solid silver, which must be replaced at a scandalous expense.

The cup was lost, and there was no clue; best let the matter rest. After prayer and meditation this was the patient verdict, and so the

quest was quelled. But its shadow haunted me from the bent brows of Deacon Poole. I knew that he was still seeking the culprit. He suspected everyone: he might suspect me. Horrible thought, once conceived never to be dispelled!

One day I met the Deacon on the street. It was near his own house, which even now I could not forbear to eye longingly. I heard the taptap of his stick on the gravel, and in a panic of terror sought a place to hide. There was no resource but to climb the stone wall and cower there behind. But, alas! My clumsy fate brought a stone stone toppling, I lost my balance and fell sprawling on the other side, with no time to recover myself and crouch invisible. Tap-tap neared the Deacon's stick. Surprised at the vision. of plaid legs and whirling billows of pink gingham, he paused at the spot, paused and spied me trembling in the grass beyond. His eyes glared at me through his big, round glasses, oh! how accusingly, I thought. He said nothing, but I guessed his horrible suspicion.

"How strangely this girl is behaving. She has something to conceal. It must be she who stole the silver communion cup. The crimiThe criminal is found!"

torture of awaiting his inevitable accusation.

With fearful misgivings I endured the approach of the Sabbath, always a day of wrath. I saw no way to avoid the ordeal. My Aunt never allowed a lapse from regularity for any excuse which I was clever enough to devise. Outwardly sulky and unregenerate, inwardly trembling with a morbid fear, I was driven to church.

With quaking knees I walked down the aisle behind my Uncle and Aunt, decent in their finery of gloom. Past the Deacon's seat I cringed, in my agitation almost dropping my blue silk parasol, and sank as low as possible into the high pew seat; but not so low that I could not feel the Deacon's gaze burning through my hat, crisping my hair. I curled my little legs, in their white stockings and ankle ties, and writhed silently, only to be seized and admonished by a vigorous arm, which left black and blue pinches under my white cambric sleeve. It was no new experience for Rhoda to wriggle in church, and the faces around me merely glared in self-righteous indignation. They could not guess the cause of my exaggerated contortions. I had no confidantes nor friends in all that white-plastered building.

The long-drawn-out horror of that service, shall I ever forget! I sat tense with awful expectation. For days I had imagined the moment which at last was at hand. The Deacon would arise, clear his throat, pound thrice on the floor with that cane of his, to call the minister's attention. Then, pointing with that same accusing rod straight at me, he would roar in stentorian tones: