the same year there were 17 women's fraternities, with 254 active chapters and a total membership of 22,833.
Athletics receive their full share of attention. Each college, usually each class, has its baseball-nine, football-eleven and boat-crew. Series of games are played with other colleges each year The Thanksgiving Day football game between Yale and Princeton, which for years was played in New York city, drew thousands of spectators, as does also the spring regatta between the Harvard and Yale crews, which is rowed on the Thames, at New London, Conn. Field-days, in which prizes are given to the winners in running, jumping, vaulting and other matches, are held in most colleges. Over half the colleges of the country have gymnasiums, and in at least one—Amherst—exercise under an instructor is required. The Dartmouth Gazette was the first college paper, founded in 1800. The Harvard Lyceum, which was begun in 1810, had Edward Everett as its first editor. Such men as Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell and Phillips Brooks were college editors. There are now over 200 college journals. Many colleges now give fellowships to specially able graduates to study in some special branch, usually abroad. The most prominent in this respect is Johns Hopkins University. The colleges of the country—some 500—are well-distributed. The largest, as a rule, are in the east. The University of Wisconsin at Madison, Wis., the University of Illinois with 4,920 students, the University of Chicago with its 3,035 students and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Mich., with its 297 professors and lecturers and 5,500 students, are among the more prominent western colleges. The oldest college in the country is Harvard at Cambridge, Mass., with 597 instructors and its 4128 students. Yale, Princeton, Amherst, Dartmouth, Bowdoin, Brown, Cornell, Columbia, Lehigh, Lafayette, the University of Pennsylvania and Williams are the other leading eastern colleges. Most of the colleges will be found mentioned under the name of the town where they are located. The total number of students of both sexes attending the 453 American colleges in 1908 was close upon 200,000, about one fourth being women. The number of instructors was over 18,000, 2,250 being women. The benefactions of the year amounted to nearly 15 million dollars, and the total income was over $30,750,000; while the gross productive funds amounted to 208⅓ millions.
College Entrance-Examination Board, of the middle states and Maryland, was established in 1899 at the instigation of Nicholas Murray Butler to obviate the difficulties arising from the diversity of standards of admission required by the various colleges and universities throughout the country. It is composed of representatives of colleges and secondary schools in the Middle States and Maryland whose duties are to hold yearly a series of college entrance-examinations with uniform tests in the various subjects and to issue certificates based upon the results of these examinations. The examination-papers for each subject are made out by a committee of three (two college professors and one high-school instructor), and then revised by a committee made up of the original three members, together with five additional high-school teachers. The papers are then sent to the places where examinations are held, which now include nearly all the larger cities in the United States, and some cities in foreign countries. No candidate fails, unless judged unfit to pass by at least two examiners. The certificates issued by the board are now accepted by nearly all colleges of the United States. Pupils who fail may have their examination papers sent to the college which they wish to enter, and, if their standing is satisfactory to that institution, they may be admitted.
College, Going to. To raise the question whether or not one should go to college is much like questioning the advisability of one's doing much reading and thinking. There are, for various reasons, many persons from whom only a minimum amount of mental activity can be expected, and a meagre education must suffice for them. But, ordinarily, any one who finds it possible to go to college, or who has energy enough to make it possible, can profit greatly by going.
It is true that occasionally a successful, or even a college-bred, man opposes a college-course for his son, on the ground that such a course unfits one for business instead of helping him in it.
But, in general, one vital condition of success in life is a knowledge of what people have thought and done in the past: a knowledge of the principal problems that have confronted them and the ways in which they have been solved. This is one of the things that a good college-course attempts to give, and does give. It gives it in the study of literature, history, natural science, art and other subjects, the various studies representing nothing more than the main lines of human endeavor.
The college-course accomplishes this object much better now than it did 25 years ago. At that time nearly all students were expected to take much the same course, consisting of Latin, Greek and mathematics, no one of which subjects dealt extensively with the actual problems of life. But since that time many subjects have been introduced, such as sociology, domestic science, domestic art, manual training and educational psychology, be-
