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EDUCATION, NEW AND OLD
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their sense of hardship. But with the body of students at Yale the case is not so. Their spirit will compare most favorably with that which Professor Palmer describes as characteristic of the New Education. That they are not merely driven by severe rules to their tasks is shown by the fact that, as I have already said, the average Yale student does not avail himself of all his allowed absences. It is also shown by the fact that a considerable percentage of men, especially in the upper classes, are ready to take over-hours of work; this in spite of the fact that the required number of recitations at Yale is fifteen (or sixteen) per week, instead of twelve as at Harvard. It is further shown by the large use which the students make of the libraries. On this point, then, let us compare facts with the New Education. Professor Palmer considers it a triumph for "the system" that the extent to which the college library is consulted by the undergraduates has increased from fifty-six per cent. in 1860–61 to eighty-five per cent. in 1883–84. But for years past the average Yale student, so far as the statistics of the respective libraries show, has been more a reader of books than his Harvard fellow under the present high estate reached by the New Education. During the year selected for comparison (1883–84) the undergraduates of Yale drew from "Linonian and Brothers" alone 18,440 volumes; all but 76