The Harvard Magazine - v. 2 Author:Harvard University Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: COLLEGE SOCIETIES. T T-? r' i-/ ./. LJ. LyC."C r A nfj r o £a How often are we startled by the appearance on the windows of University of a new bulletin... more »-board bearing strange devices, dark and mysterious to the uninitiated, but full, no doubt, of awful meaning to those who can decipher them! We expect soon to see:—The Gimel Beth Daleth will meet at their rooms. Per order of the . Or perhaps the name may appear in full, " The Tiglath Pile- ser, etc." While the number of societies is thus increasing, we propose to consider a few of their evils. Our subject, like Mr. Gladstone's when he was describing Cerberus, is naturally divided into three heads. Not but that we might treat of societies from many other points of view if we chose. We might look at them Doddridgically, that is, as to their Rise and Progress, or Bunyanically, as to the Holy War (" auri sacra fames") which has always been waged among them, or we, might, in the manner of De Quincey, consider them as sublime and imposing—Humbugs. Their intellectual, moral, and social effects, however, will probably fill our narrow limits. Imprimis, then, have societies any evils intellectually, or as literary societies? And here it becomes us to proceed with caution, lest we be denounced as heresiarchs by the whole indignant American people. For literary societies, be it observed, are almost wholly an American institution, especially in the form of debating societies, which hold a place among us not allowed them elsewhere. But we think it may reasonably be doubted whether they are adapted to develop in the highest degree the human intellect. If the great end to be gained were a readiness in the use of words, an acquaintance with Webster Unabridged and Roget's Thesaurus, no better system could be devised than that of de...« less