Keeping school in a castle is a romantic thing; as romantic as keeping hotel in a castle.

By itself the imitation castle is doubtless harmless, and well enough; but as a symbol and breeder and sustainer of maudlin Middle-Age romanticism here in the midst of the plainest and sturdiest and infinitely greatest and worthiest of all the centuries the world has seen, it is necessarily a hurtful thing and a mistake.

Here is an extract from the prospectus of a Kentucky ‘Female College.’  Female college sounds well enough; but since the phrasing it in that unjustifiable way was done purely in the interest of brevity, it seems to me that she-college would have been still better—­because shorter, and means the same thing:  that is, if either phrase means anything at all—­

’The president is southern by birth, by rearing, by education, and by sentiment; the teachers are all southern in sentiment, and with the exception of those born in Europe were born and raised in the south.  Believing the southern to be the highest type of civilization this continent has seen, the young ladies are trained according to the southern ideas of delicacy, refinement, womanhood, religion, and propriety; hence we offer a first-class female college for the south and solicit southern patronage.’

{footnote (long one) [Illustrations of it thoughtlessly omitted by the advertiser: 

Knoxville, Tenn., October 19.—­This morning a few minutes after ten o’clock, General Joseph A. Mabry, Thomas O’Connor, and Joseph A. Mabry, Jr., were killed in a shooting affray.  The difficulty began yesterday afternoon by General Mabry attacking Major O’Connor and threatening to kill him.  This was at the fair grounds, and O’Connor told Mabry that it was not the place to settle their difficulties.  Mabry then told O’Connor he should not live.  It seems that Mabry was armed and O’Connor was not.  The cause of the difficulty was an old feud about the transfer of some property from Mabry to O’Connor.  Later in the afternoon Mabry sent word to O’Connor that he would kill him on sight.  This morning Major O’Connor was standing in the door of the Mechanics’ National Bank, of which he was president.  General Mabry and another gentleman walked down Gay Street on the opposite side from the bank.  O’Connor stepped into the bank, got a shot gun, took deliberate aim at General Mabry and fired.  Mabry fell dead, being shot in the left side.  As he fell O’Connor fired again, the shot taking effect in Mabry’s thigh.  O’Connor then reached into the bank and got another shot gun.  About this time Joseph A. Mabry, Jr., son of General Mabry, came rushing down the street, unseen by O’Connor until within forty feet, when the young man fired a pistol, the shot taking effect in O’Connor’s right breast, passing through the body near the heart.  The instant Mabry shot, O’Connor turned and fired, the load taking effect in young Mabry’s right breast and side.  Mabry fell pierced with