Excerpt from The Yale Literary Magazine, Vol. 60: October, 1894

Character cannot count upon all his acquaintances as friends. But the prevailing feeling is one of good fellow ship. If the now fast disappearing walls of the Old Brick Row could speak before they become the dust of the earth, what tales they could tell of disappointed and grati fied ambitions, of discouragement and encouragement, of comedies and tragedies! What scenes they must have witnessed of the quiet shake of a room-mate's hand after some disappointment, and the heartier congratulatory hand shakes of a score of friends after some success Although for the most part the conversation of the college man is in a light vein there is a certain quality of seriousness beneath the surface, and the man who will one day tease you about your latest hat or relate to you his experiences with some buyer of old clothes, would the next, if occasion demanded it, sacrifice himself to any extent for you. We do not talk much about books here at Yale, and we do not, some of us, think or read as much as we should perhaps. Nor are we in the habit of dis cussing psychological problems outside of the recitation room. But our college gossip, our informal way of drop ping in upon one another and talking sense and nonsense combined in a way peculiar to college and college men, is worth all the intellectual discussion in the world. Our little repasts at the round table at our walks about the elm lined streets of the city, our after supper games on the Campus, the life of the Fence and of our eating clubs, are all invaluable, but it is the gossip in our rooms which we shall miss most when we leave the place. But there is a more serious aspect to the subject of college gossip. The talk of our little world consists very largely in the criticism of men and observations concern ing their peculiarities. This is natural and in some ways beneficial, for while in college there is nothing, perhaps, in which we grow more proficient than the study of human character, which is the greatest study in the world. When such criticism is good natured it develops into that pleasant bantering spirit everywhere present within college walls. There is a phase of our gossip.

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