THE ELON COL LEGE WEEKLY.
January ll, l9ll.
THE Kl.ON COLLElitj AVEEKLV.
Published every Wednesday during the
College year by
The Weekly Publishing Company.
W. P. Lawrence, Editor.
E. T. Hines,. R. A. Campbell, Affie Griffin,
Associate Editors.
W. C. Wicker, Circulation Manager.
T. C. Amick, Business llanager.
CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT.
Cash Subsoiiptions (40 weeks), 50 Cents.
Time Subscriptions (40 weeks), 75^ cents.
All matter pertaining to subscriptions
should be addressed to W. C. Wicker,
Klon College, N.C.
^ IMPORTANT.
The ofBces of publication are Greens
boro, N. C., South Elm St., and Elon
College, N. C., where all communica
tions relative to the editorial work of
the Weekly should be sent. Matter
relating to the mailing of the Weekly
should be sent to the Greensboro office.
Entered as second-class matter at the
post-olHce at Greensbo.ro, N. C.
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 11, 1911.
DRIFT WOOD.
' On the curren of the rising stream, one
may see floating sticks, chunks, and old
logs. This is called drift wood. It al
ways goes with the stream until an eddy
or some ol)struction is reached. There it
stoi>s. This is much the case in life. Up
on the rising tide of any vocation, enter-
])ri>e, or professi(jn may be seen drift
wood, and when adversity is encounter
ed a rati of it accumulates. One observes
the same principle also, in institutions
of learning, and on the rising tide of any
school is to be seen more drift-wood more
of the floating student population than
at normal times when the cuirent of the
school is at an average Iieight; although
when the stream is at its normal heiglit
occasional drift wood may be seen going
down with the current.
There are various obstructions that
catch and stop this drift wood in College
life. Some of tlvem are disagreeable
room-mates, college restrictions as to lib
erty or curriculm. College life is not so
nearly free from all kinds of profitable
labor as it sometimes appears, somi? mem
ber of the faculty is partial or is disa-
gi'eeable, and tantalizing, and .it may be
does not recognize the social or intellec
tual rank accorded to one by his home
community.
Now. it sjiould be remembered that
drift wood is good for making fires, but
that the wood crafts look to more sub
stantial timber for material. A student
who is not satisfied with what a reput
able institution can do for him, and is
stopped by any little hitch or obstacle
and jumps to some other school is seldom
the man who will bring things to pass.
We are born with wills, not to change
the course of the cun-ent of life in which
we find ours?lves floating for a brief space
as bubbles, but with wills that we may
keej) in the stieam and not wear our
lives out with chafing against the banks.
The college man who can pursue the even
tenor of his college course through all
the exasperations along (he way rather
than quit under provocation and fly to
other ills that he knows not of, is the
man who can be depended upon as hav
ing at least one vital quality of leader
ship.
It is with a shade of misgiving that
students quit an other reputable college
and come to us in the midst of their
course, claiming to have been mistreated
there, or that other colleges may have
students go fiom us with like reasons
for the change. Yet we all know that so
long as fallible men rule colleges or states
universal justice is not to be expected.
THE 1910 DEATH TALE OF LITER
ATURE.
.Tiisrnh Addison’s “Vision of Mirza”
reprfco.nts life as a bridge on thiee score
and ten arches with a number of broken
arches at the farther end. The throng
of infantile humanity that emerges out
of a mist or fog cloud at the approach
of the bridge, suddenly finds this bridge
thickly set with secret trap doors and a
large per centage fall through these into
the flood below, before the throng icaches
the flfth arch. These trap doors become
less numerous as successive arches are
pasS;d, and the danger of dropping into
the stream beneath becomes less and less
until towai'ils the end of the three score
and ttn where these doors begin to in
crease in number with a like increase in
danger of falling into the ever flowing
river of time, so that onl;,' a few persons
ar • seen to hobble on over the broken
arches, hardly a lone'one escaping to get
beyond the cne hundredth arch.
This is a beautiful and impressive al
legory and is kindred in thought to a re
flection on .the field of lite’.ature during
the jiast year, Tlie following are the
chief of tlie lii rary characters who have
fallen ihrousrh the secret trap di ors dur
ing the past year:
As one's eye runs down the list of men
and women, more or less primiinent iu
pi'csent-day literature. Major Martin
Hume is the first acottch ,dttkonowis h
Hume is the first to catch one's notice.
When the year 1910 dawned he had then
just finished further studies among six
teenth centliry Sjianish archives, upon
which to base another of his character
istic “popularizations” of Tudor-days
history. A. J. Butler, the foremost liv
ing Dante scholar, was at woik on his
translation of Spezzioni’s commentary on
the great Italian. “I^ouise Forsslund”
was wi'iting. a story much in the vein of
her charming Old Lady No. 31. Borden
P. Bowne was coiTecting the proofs of
his Essence of Religion, only tho other
day issued from the press. Fraser Wal
ter had not laid down the management
of the London “Times.” “0. Henry,”
forewarned of the approaching end to his
brilliant labors, had established himself
in New York to make as much literary hay
as might be turned before his early sun
should S;t. To-day these and half a hun
dred otheis have laid by their pens for
ever.
Death came to ten of the fifty-six with
the initial month of the twelve, the ndl
being begun on New Year’s Day itself
with word of the passing of Professor
W. A. Stevens, lof the Rochester Theologi
cal Seminai'y, who has contributed both
generously and pointedly to religious let
ters. The others were the historians John
Sedgwick, James Hannay and Dr. He
Haas, the last named also an authority on
archaeological subjects; the brilliant Aus-
train political economist Franz von Juras-
chek; Edouard Rod, the Swiss novelist,
critic and editor, not so well known in
“the States” as the real merit of his
work warrants; Otto Bierbaum, the strik
ingly versatile leader of the young “rev-
(dutionary” party in present-day German
letters; Barret Eastman (agent of his
own end!), who stood well to the fore
in American dramatic ciiticism; and the
publishers Henry T. Coates and Sir Wal
ter Scott, both authois, as well as pro
ducers of the writings of others.
If, in point of time, these names are to
be first mentioned, there are six which
must be set at the head of any such
chronicle, through their long-proved mas
tery of the gentle art they honored.
April closed forever the liteiai’y labors of
“Mark Twain'’ and Bjornstjerne Bjorn-
son. Professor William James died in
July, and the veteran (roldwin Smith a
month earlier—a few' days only before
the end came to the labors of Sidney Por
ter. An October dispatch told of the
passing of William Vaughn Moody.
No American writer of our day has
given to so large a number of people so
great an amount of innocent enl^ertain-
luent ;:s Samuel Langhoi'u Clemens;
though this is a matter quite apart from
the iiuestions of the fineness of literary
quality in his work. On that point crit
ical ojnnions differ: there are those who
consider that his Joan of Arc holds high
place among seriously imaginative woiks
of literature, and that at other times he
shoAved far more than the talent of the
deliglitful boys, Tom Sawyer and Huck
Finn, and in such tales as The Prince and
the Pauper, he left in a leader's mem-
orv-gallerj’ distinct and individual charac
ter creations. It is really a tribute to
his variety of interests that readers of
many degrees of culture and taste are
champions of half a dozen different spec
imens of his art as entitled to be called
best. Whatever that best was, though, it
was so good that his popularity has be
come fixed and general, in spite of the
facts that, in common with most other
professed humorists, his flint did not al
ways strike fire; that there were undoubt
edly commonplace and even tedious pas
sages in his many pages; that he could
not always deal successfully with plot,
and that so often he mistook melodrama
for di-ania.
The death of Bjorson not only makes
the world of literature poorer by the loss
of a poel, bnt the whole world poorer by
the loss of one of the must amazing and
vital of modern personalities. His jivas
the true national voice- of Norway, for,
in the words of Brandes, “to name his
name is lib? lu)isting the flag of his lov
ed fatherland.” He was, however, more
akin to the Russian seho»>l of letters than
to the Noiwegian, for he chose to be the
laureate of his humble neighbors, immor
talizing the toilers on the land, the cot
tage home and th? lowly hearth, and he
did this with such truth to fact, glorified,
withal, by so large a spiritual insight, as
to have done far more than merely win
the enduring love of the masses of his
fellows. Oth r ages will have new prob
lems to face, and new ]irophets will arise
to give guidance in their solution; but
the author of Ja, vi elsker and Over de
Hoj.e Fjelde, the creator of “Synnove
Solbakken” and “Arne,” the restorer of
Sigurd Slembe and Olaf the Holy, is
more than “reasonably sure” of immor
tality.
A popularizer of psychology. Dr. James
leaves thousands of pupils to mourn his
death, and probably even more devoted
readers to regret that the last of his fasci
nating studies of the deeper problems of
mortal life and the human mind has now
been given to the world. One does not
need to say that he was the greatest of
American philosophers to write, that he
was the one best known both to this coun
try and in Europe, for he had attained to
a reputation nearly world-wide. Others
might have enunciated his conclusions and
remained obscure, but he had the advan
tage of a style so pellucid and captivat
ing as to give weight and currency to his
teaching's. His “pragmatism,” as he him
self acknowledged, is only “a new name
for an old way of thinking,” but (as the
Italian Ferrero goes on) “it offers Eu-
roi)e the first practical ground for the
conciliation of th? j)resent religious, phil-
osopluc and scientific strife.” Of the
permanent value of this vloctrine it is too
early to speak, but there can be no just
question of the impetus which .Tames lent
to the study of psychology by a combi
nation of qualities which placed him
• among the foremost thinkers of our time.
An equally great thinker was Goldwin
Smith, with whom we lose almost the last
of the great Victorians. He was a migh
tily rounded scholar and he was a pow-
erul writer as well, for, however much
one might differ from his views, it was
not possible to f.ail to recognize and ad
mire the splendid lucidity and vigor with
which they were set forth. In an age of
lax and extravagant expression he used
tlie writteTi word with unerring precision
and luifailing dignity. He was the keen
est of ])artisans, but never a mere intel
lectual gladiator; whatever the cause he
espoused, it was from conviction and not
from caprice—and their name is legion
who miss to-day the weight and influ
ence of his pen and mind.
Just half the age of the Canadian
scholar, Sidney Porter (‘^0. Heniy”)
has attained the realest literary success
in forty-three years. With a brevity and
point new even to the American short
Dr, J. H. Brooks.
DENTAL .SURGEON
Office Over Poster’s Shoe Store
BURLINGTON, N. C.
It’s good Work that Counts
See if the
SANITARY BARBER. RHOP
Can Please You.
BRANNOCK & MATKINS, Prop’s.
G. E. Jordan, M. D,
Office Gibsonville Drug Co.,
GIBSONVILLE, N. C.
CALL ON
Burlington Hardware
Company
For First Class Plumbing, Builders’
Hardware, Farm Implements.
Paints, Etc., Etc.
BURLINGTON, N. C.