J A PIECE OF YALE HISTORY. UST two years ago, in the pages of this magazine, there was proposed a plan for a University debating society which, though taken up with enthusiasm, giving promise of success, and enlisting the best talent of the college, bids fair to come to naught. The attempt was doubtless due to the expressed sorrow of our alumni that Linonia and Brothers have passed away and to their earnest wish, coupled with that of many undergraduates, that their animating spirit, at least some portion of it, might again be in our midst. That these societies have passed away is a thing not to be accounted for by the graduate of forty years standing, who has lived away from the changing tide of college life and customs, while to us in college it seems quite as strange that, while Oxford and Cambridge and, in our own country, Princeton-to say nothing of Harvard, Oberlin, and others have flourishing debating clubs, we, at Yale, find it almost impossible to gain a like Now all this cannot be laid to a lack of energy or far-sightedness, but rather to the peculiar circumstances which surround us. These are many, not easy to be success. grasped, and still harder to be analyzed. But I think you will admit that, considering the labor and mortification of lifting the wheels of a parliamentary assembly out of the mire, and soon feeling them slip back again because the burden is too heavy--I think you will admit that then we should look carefully for quicksands. If we find them, not only will it furnish a long sought for explanation to our graduates, but it will make those of our own number who have tried to do something for debating feel that they have done their best, that you and I could have done no better and, in all likelihood, not so well. Back more than one hundred years, under President Clapp, in the year 1753, before there was an English course in college, or even a literary one, Greek and Latin having long been pumped at until their wells were dry, in this year, 1753, it appeared both to the President and students that their curriculum was deficient. Culture was the thing demanded-books, ideas, and a vehicle for their expression. Add to this that we were then scenting from afar the coming war with England, and were thus led to investigate our rights and liberties, and you have the germ of the debate interest which was soon to figure in the foreground. At first, however, it was something broader, a sort of panacea for the stiffness, the "wise wretchedness" of our life here that occupied men's thoughts. Something was needed not only for the "purposes of debate,” but also for the "cultivation of literary studies," so that we might acquire, to use the quaint words of the old President, "an agreeable style and method of writing." Recollect that in those days we were an isolated community, working while we did work at things uninteresting, a community two days journey from New York, without foot ball or base ball, mixing but little in New Haven society, and no wonder the foundation of Linonia, with its yearly accumulating library of books not furnished by the college, was welcomed and entered into heartily. From the start, too, there was a prestige, a social character about the work. Success assured, men were proud of their enrollment, and so high did this spirit run, that fifteen years later Brothers was |