In spite, however, of these disagreeables, I should recommend any student to suffer them with Spartan courage, as the benefits he receives should repay him an hundredfold for them all.  The life of the debating society is a handy antidote to the life of the classroom and quadrangle.  Nothing could be conceived more excellent as a weapon against many of those peccant humours that we have been railing against in the jeremiad of our last ’College Paper’—­particularly in the field of intellect.  It is a sad sight to see our heather-scented students, our boys of seventeen, coming up to College with determined views—­roues in speculation—­having gauged the vanity of philosophy or learned to shun it as the middle-man of heresy—­a company of determined, deliberate opinionists, not to be moved by all the sleights of logic.  What have such men to do with study?  If their minds are made up irrevocably, why burn the ‘studious lamp’ in search of further confirmation?  Every set opinion I hear a student deliver I feel a certain lowering of my regard.  He who studies, he who is yet employed in groping for his premises, should keep his mind fluent and sensitive, keen to mark flaws, and willing to surrender untenable positions.  He should keep himself teachable, or cease the expensive farce of being taught.  It is to further this docile spirit that we desire to press the claims of debating societies.  It is as a means of melting down this museum of premature petrifactions into living and impressionable soul that we insist on their utility.  If we could once prevail on our students to feel no shame in avowing an uncertain attitude towards any subject, if we could teach them that it was unnecessary for every lad to have his opinionette on every topic, we should have gone a far way towards bracing the intellectual tone of the coming race of thinkers; and this it is which debating societies are so well fitted to perform.

We there meet people of every shade of opinion, and make friends with them.  We are taught to rail against a man the whole session through, and then hob-a-nob with him at the concluding entertainment.  We find men of talent far exceeding our own, whose conclusions are widely different from ours; and we are thus taught to distrust ourselves.  But the best means of all towards catholicity is that wholesome rule which some folk are most inclined to condemn—­I mean the law of obliged speeches.  Your senior member commands; and you must take the affirmative or the negative, just as suits his best convenience.  This tends to the most perfect liberality.  It is no good hearing the arguments of an opponent, for in good verity you rarely follow them; and even if you do take the trouble to listen, it is merely in a captious search for weaknesses.  This is proved, I fear, in every debate; when you hear each speaker arguing out his own prepared specialite (he never intended speaking, of course, until some remarks