.THE HESPERIAN
Ono of our students recently remarked that
every other student ho met wore glasses.
Whilo this is an exaggeration, yet it is a
fact that proportionately more of our stu
dents wear glasses each succeeding year.
Hardly a week passes that does not sec two
or three additions to the ranks of the spec
tacle wearers. Now, this result is, in a
great, measure, traceable to the bad lighting
of the library, We do not claim that alt
these defects of vision are due to this cause,
hut we do claim that it is the cause in more
than fifty per cent of those cases where the
sight has failed since the student entered the
University. It is a fact that many whose
eyes are not strong are obliged to forego the
use of the library at night simply because
the lights are so very poor. "While we do
not believe with the student who sarcastical
ly remarked that one optician had donated
the burners, while another paid part of the
gas bill simply for the benefits sure to accrue
to them from treating eyes injured by these
lights, yet it serves to show the feeling of
the students on this subject. If the library
can be lighted by electricity, it should be
done; if it cannot on account of the expense
involved, give us only half as many lights,
but let this half give a light strong enough
to cast a respectable shadow.
Many scenes darker than those described in
General booths "In Darkest England" are to be
seen all about us. One of the saddest spectacles
which I ev.r saw I witnessed to-day when I en
tered the University library and found some
thirty literary students sealed around the tables,
all busily counting words. There were among
them students in all stages of the torture. Some
were novices with faces still bright and hopeful,
hair still golden, whose eyes sometimes wandered
from the books as though their minds revolted
from the irksome labor. Some had evidently
counted a good while. They had become mere
calculating machines. They never spoke, never
raised their eyes, their faces were like those Dante
saw in Hell, alike helpless and hopeless. Some
were old. They had counted long. Their
frames vere bent, their eyes were almost sight
less, they had counted thousands of volumes, yet
they leaned down over their books straining
through their glasses, and counted wildly, mad
ly, as though they realized the shortness of life
and knew that the night cometh in which no
man may count.
-
Whatever the JFehra&kan is or is not, it is
certainly honest in calling itself a "Represen
tative Paper." With an art column culled
from popular art magazines, a literary col
umn culled from the leading reviews, a
musical column culled from the music
journals, an athletic column culled from the
athletic magazines, and a local column
culled from the Hesperian, the JVobi-ashm
is just as "representative" as it claims to
be.
In a speech to the students at Yale the other
day, Chauncey M. Dcpew made the character
istic remark: " What made the class of '53 so
famous is that half its members went into journal
ism and praised the other half. Ex.
Some hope for the college editor yet.
Ruskin said that bad art is only permitted to
exist in countries where there is bad taste, and
that bad taste is only found in countries where
bad morals prevail. If this is true, it does not
look well for the morality of Lincoln that such
a piece of atrocious painting as the Lansing drop
cm tain is allowed to exist. The curtain is cer
tainly one of the most pitiable attempts at art
that can be seen anywhere. There is absolutely
no perspective, the anatomy is all wrong, the
groupings are anything but beautiful, and the
coloring is simply maddening. At the bottom of
the curtain is this elegant though rather startling
bit of Latin, "Sommum: Forts Vitales." I defy
any classical scholar to translate it. If such a
piece of canvass had been hung in an Italian
town during the Renaissance, the most ignorant
of the peasant folk would have turned from it
with loathing, or, more likely, they would have
torn it to shreds. It is almost time' that the
Americans should discover that a man can lie and
cheat and sin with his brush as well as with his
pen or tongue, and that distorted art is an insult
to nature and to humanity.
Charlie "What made the old cat howl so?"
Walter "I guess you'd make a noise if you
was all full of fiddlestrings inside of you."
