Exchanges.
A. M. SHARP, Hesperian, }
G. N. RAPER, Columbian, } Editors.
Simplicity, says Pope, is the mean between ostentation and rusticity. The man who does not take this mean as his goal in life will never fulfil the duty for which he was designed. A nation's civilization depends upon the culture and good manners of the citizens who make up that civilization. The South can boast of her good manners springing from the commingled blood of the Cavalier and Huguenot, before the War. Now, since the greatest obstacle was forever obliterated when the requiem of slavery was sounded at Appomatox, what is to hinder people from obtaining the highest type of this development? A recent number of the College Message truly says that the great obstacles of the present are the modern dude and coquette, and the inordinate worship of the "Almighty dollar."
The Oak Leaf discusses to some extent "The Importance of Literary Society Work," in which many reasons are given why boys should attend to Society duty as well as to the regular routine work of the school room. The writer is broad in his views and his arguments are based on common sense principles. The Society hall is the place to begin public speaking, and debating is mightier than patent systems as a cure for mind-wandering, which is perhaps one of the gravest difficulties that the student has to overcome. Forensic discussion, in addition to wearing away bashfulness, gives the participant the habit of concentrated and continuous thought.
Carlyle has said that history is nothing but the biographies of great men. Such being the case, the study of the lives and characters of those who have been the chief actors in the drama of the world's history will be an enchanting way by which the civilization and refinement of different people can be understood. The Archive was glad to see in a recent issue of the Western Sentinel a communication on "Patrick Henry," in which the author briefly describes the career of
"the forest born Demosthenes
Whose thunder shook the Philip of the seas."