THE late attempt to blow up a recitation room was a good joke. We are not aware that the tutor whose classes recite there was obnoxious in any way, or that the room had behaved in an unbecoming manner, but it was, no doubt, a very funny thing to put a bundle of explosives behind the black-board, attach a fuse, apply a match, and watch the effect from behind a protecting elm or from within the mischief-hiding walls of South Middle. The perpetrator was probably ambitious to rival the fame of Gen. Newton, and to compare a recitation room with Hell Gate in this explosive way is the very refinement of wit. The reefs that lie hidden in recitation rooms, lurking behind gloomy black-boards, are as obstructive to a safe and easy sail through college as ever were the rocks of Hell Gate to the vessels that navigated the waters of that neighborhood. We hazard the guess that this young demolisher of recitation rooms and blackboards has been aground upon these reefs, perhaps been wrecked there, and, without venturing to try again, has determined to remove the obstructions. The idea is a good one, but has not been thoroughly carried out. No man who is unable to maintain his stand above two can expect to get through college by blowing up a single recitation room. There are others in which he will find as serious ledges as in this particular one. He must carry his joke to its conclusion and blow up the whole college, or sit on the ragged edges of recitation room Hell Gates until relieved by the interposition of the Faculty.

THE system of bi-weekly publication, upon which the Record and Courant have entered this term, seems to be working well. If the improvement which such a system promises is not yet so marked as to be very noticeable in the papers themselves, there is such a decided improvement in the appearance of the editors that the change cannot well be called a failure. To see them on off-weeks, surrounded by leisure and luxury, one would never think that they inked their fingers with the editorial quill or

swore over a proof sheet. One would never recognize the haggard, hurrying item-hunters of last term in these luxurious fellows. Editorial work has now become to them a pleasure instead of a duty, an agreeable pursuit instead of a relentless pursuer. They have ascended several rounds on the journalistic ladder and have escaped that lower plane on which the demand for copy prevents judicious selection. We congratulate them on their improved condition, and on having time to do work more satisfactorily to themselves and their readers. It is hardly necessary to mark out the boundary between their field and our own. Having climbed so high they will rest a while to examine the enlarged horizon and make all secure, and we fear no encroachments on our peculiar domain for some time yet. There are signs that they may rival us in "dullness," but we can detect as yet no indications of aspirations toward "respectability."

NO SOONER is one pernicious custom stopped here than another springs up to furnish material for the protests of the religious press. It used to be the dissipations of the Sophomore societies and hazing and rushes. Later it was studying in chapel, but now the danger which threatens the youth of Yale is "six new billiard tables." We are gratified to see that some papers are sensible enough to see the wisdom of President Porter's suggestion, but others are shocked to think of a Christian gentleman conniving at an innovation destined to debauch the virtue of a college community. We students are not expected to look at this matter in an unprejudiced light. Besides the confidence we have in the good judgment of our President, we are known to have a natural love for sinful things. We have shown this sinful love before, and are only giving another manifestation thereof in our desire for billiard tables. But with the President and the best of the religious press on our side, we may perhaps boast that for once our desires are not contrary to morality and flatter ourselves that we are searching for relaxation and fun in good company and in a highly

respectable way. To relieve those super-sensitive journalists who scent danger in the project, we would like to recall the case of Princeton. If their billiard tables were not the cause of the recent revival there, then we have failed to interpret rightly the relations of cause and effect. They certainly were contemporaneous or successive in point of time, and if the billiard tables did not occasion the revival, then the exalted moral and religious spirit succeeding the revival must have suggested the billiard tables. At any rate, they are connected in some way, and the fact that they existed together, goes to show that they are not incompatible with each other. No one knows what may result even in Yale from their introduction. If we should have a revival here somebody would be sorry they ever said so much against billiards. It is gratifying to be able to inform the college that there is a prospect of the immediate carrying out of President Porter's suggestion. We refer to the President's wager on the Springfield boat race as illustrated in the Banner. The odds he gave were certainly large, but he was betting on a sure thing, and when the bet is paid we may expect to be released from all college duties, in order to devote ourselves exclusively to billiards.

AS REFRESHING a bit of reading matter as it has been our good fortune to chance upon lately is the chart issued from the press of Mr. Waite, No. 6 Library st., in respect to the "management of steam radiators." If there is anything which will tend to excite an interest in the way in which they are managed, it is a few years' experience with the steam radiators of Yale College. Such an experience had led us to believe that they were entirely unmanageable, and, after fruitless amateurish efforts to control them, we gave it up. It was consoling to know

that what we had failed in had floored Waite before us. But we were premature in our conclusions; Waite had not given up, but was busy in evolving from his own internal consciousness a code of rules for the management of these refractory radiators. The code is short and

practical. 1. "To obtain heat, open both valves." The italics are in the original text and are intended to emphasize the necessity of fulfilling that important condition as a prelude to a successful management. It may perhaps be impudent to suggest another condition equally important and necessary, that of having a fire under the boilers at the grand fountain head behind Alumni Hall, but with a little shiver we venture to do it. With no desire to institute a revolution in the steam heating business, we would yet suggest the importance of embodying in the revised code an italicized direction to the fireman. It will not only give a rounded perfection to the code as a whole, but the knowledge that there is even the slightest possibility of there being anything warm behind the valves, will encourage the obeying of this first italicized valve law. Many disappointments have made people shy of meddling with the valves at all. The second rule reads, "To diminish heat," but it is not necessary to give directions about diminishing heat in Yale College. No one ever had too much, even with both valves open. The presence of this rule in the code is only a bit of Waite's drollery, of that freezing wit peculiar to him. The third rule pertains to the symmetry of the radiator, and, if fully observed, will prevent its becoming clogged, if by accident anything, steam for instance, should get in and, finding no outlet, die there. The fourth and last rule is worth transcribing as a whole: "When the room is not occupied, the valves should be left open to prevent injury from frost." This rule is the outcrop of Waite's humane soul. He knows that no man can sit calmly in his room and see his own steam radiator suffer from cold, but he knows that even the most tender watchers must sometimes absent themselves, and for such an emergency he provides a preventive against the insidious ravages of frost. No one who has heard the despairing gurgle in the throat of a dying radiator as the last spark of warmth leaves its veins in the silent midnight, can feel anything but a mournful sympathy in Waite's humane endeavors to ameliorate the radiatorial condition. But the treat

ment is not yet thorough enough for such a case of chronic chill as prevails in our college. Wet flannel cloths and a warm coal fire will go far toward tempering the frost to the open-valved radiator, and we insist upon this remedy being inserted in the revised code. On the whole we congratulate Mr. Waite on his excellent theory of management. If, however, he will be willing to let us take care of the valves while he devotes himself assiduously to keeping a fire, we will risk the radiators against frost and guarantee him greater success as a practical than he has acquired as a theoretical steam man.

MEMORABILIA YALENSIA.

Our Record

Extends from June 17th to Oct. 9th,-over the most eventful period in all the year. From it the Freshman may learn what was said and done at the Commencement, before the advent of his class, what have been the achievements of our boating men, how our nine was defeated at Hartford, and many other items of interest. But let us plunge immediately in medias res. First in order must be placed

The Baccalaureate Sermon,

Which was preached by President Porter on Sunday, the 25th of June, in the Battell Chapel, and was the opening act of the Commencement week festivities. The text was found in John xv, 16. The President spoke of the conditions and the character of a successful Christian life, closing with an impressive address to the graduating class of '76, who filled the middle aisle completely. The rest of the edifice was also crowded. Ex-President Woolsey sat with President Porter and took part in the religious exercises. The edifice was again well filled. on Tuesday morning, when the exercises of