EDITORS DAILY CRIMSON:-The course of study laid out by the choice of electives at the end of the freshman year embraces many diverse branches of learning. Yet a college career, putting aside the minor studies or specialties, must fall on one of the two roads of learning, the classical or the practical. The former road we may safely predict is fairly well known and understood by the students, of their school education has been the average one, and it is the latter course that gives the tyro the most difficulty to classify. Roughly speaking, a classical course of study embraces mathematics, history, modern languages, philosophy and political economy and English literature. There is naturally a great variety of choice under each head, yet, when the student has some slight idea in his mind of what his future course in life is going to be, selection ought not and will not be difficult, since present study must shape our future career. Classics are given up by a large number of men at the end of freshman year simply because they think that in the active work of life the mere fact of "digging"out a translation in Greek or Latin will not aid them in the world. Such is the general belief, and in consequence the general tendency of the classes is toward the English branches of learning. Yet we hold that it is somewhat of an error to summarily put aside the work that has taken many school years to bring to a point where it begins to be really useful. An average student is able to read easy Greek and Latin at sight when he becomes a sophomore, and is consequently prepared to read the higher class of authors in the literature of each language. While we do not advocate an entirely classical course throughout one's whole college career, we do advise that some compromise be made between a classical and practical education, and that the ancient languages be taken through sophomore year so that the student may read standard authors whose words are as alive today as when uttered many hundred years ago, and that all the time and trouble spent over the elements of Greek and Latin may not be thrown aside as waste. The plea that this election will make a man's course complex and that he will get a broken knowledge of many subjects is some what strained. True, a little training in any subject is a dangerous thing, but when the modern languages and English studies follow after a solid foundation of the very learning on which the above studies are built, then putting mathematics aside, a man is well fitted for almost any sphere in life, be it law, medicine, science, or even a practical business career. The study of the classics provided it be not carried to far, gives an undoubted finish to a man's education that no other studies can impart. For mathematics, the foundation of a practical education fails in polishing the intellectual tone of the mind. Too much time and care cannot be spent by the youngest class in college in selecting and following one of the two chief branches of learning.

M.