Your last of the 27th2 came to hand this morning and was read and reread, and the "remark" made by afriend pondered and reflected upon. With all honor due him, whoever he may be, I beg leave to differ with him in saying "that the very fact of a mans having the opportunity of graduating, and does not avail himself of it, will be of more injury to him in any future undertaking, than he can obliterate by four years of fruitful labor, even if he should be as good a scholboy as though he had graduated". I deny this assertion "in toto". but do not say that I will not receive any advice from or profit from by the remarks of a friend. The fact that "a man refuses to graduate" is not an injury that cannot be obliterated, but it certainly is an injury to spend time for the mere emptiness of being a graduate without any improvement, it is not only a sheer waste of time, but it is the travelling of a long—a dreary road beset with many dangers and quicksands peculiarly attractive to those the least inclined to relax their labors and listen to the syren song of a deluded fancy, which one would acquire in the course of four years of idleness subjected to but a very slight temptation, he would indulge in vices and form habits more injurious and difficult to rid one's self of, than to cleanse the Augean stables of their filth, for it not unfrequently happens that a promising youth enters college highly elated with the prospect of success—cheered on by the encouraging words of every passer by—ambitious to satisfy the sanguine expectation of his most zealous relatives and friends,—the laurel wreath impatient to press his fervid brow—and the lovely, bewitching smiles of his "dulcinia" flitting upon the clear sky of his unclouded imagination, promissing him ten thousand thousand kisses and giving him a few to start on—with the avowal that the rest shall be as good or better—and they not taken into the account. Yet when the race is run and the end is nearly attained, the venomed shaft is hurled—the vile old demon has outstripped the pauser reason—despondency, gloom, and disappointment now reign supreme when once all was sunshine and smiles, and to suppose that one would fall from such an eminence and fail of sucess under such encouragments,—epecially the latter—, what would be the condition of one who would serve an apprenticeship of four years for the vain title of a graduate? He certainly would trust his reputation & his fortune to the rawhide-rattle of a "sheepskin" and the reputation of an instition, which he would tends to defame, polute, and destroy by his own slothful and idle example and when the aprenticeship is served, and the late bondman steps into the new arena,—the active scenes of life—, he'll find full soon, that, insted of lolling on flowing beds of ease, the pen of the poet never recorded a more homely truth than that contained in the few words,—to wit; "This world is all a fleeting show To mans illusion given."3

Then it is that is that he sees the fruit of his choice and the error of his way—contrasts his condition with what he was and what he might have been, if his time had been otherwise employed—and firmly convinces himself that he could accomplish more in four weeks of moderate labor than his habits formed and "sheepskin" unworthily obtained can ever accomplish for him in any future undertaking, and if disposed to put the blame on any other than his own devoted head, will point with a scornful finger to the suggestor of the "sheepskin" and be want to consider him his fellest foe and a most consumate villain.