OREGON EMERALD _ Pubished Wednesday and Saturday dur ing the college year by students of the UNIVERSITY OF OREGON Application made for second class mail rates. SUBSCRIPTION RATES One year.$1.00 Single copy.$ .05 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF W. C. NICHOLAS .’10 ASSISTANT EDITORS Ralph Moores .T2 Fay Clark .’12 Calvin Sweek .’ll Dean Collins .’10 MANAGER FRITZ DEAN .’ll ASSISTANT MANAGER C. A. OSTERHOLM .’12 Saturday, January 15, 1910 A Lesson Learned Why did more than thirty candidates sign up lor the debate tryouts tins year and then less than half ot them come outi e reason is, we believe, that two teams were selected at separate tryouts. And this tact should lie remembered hy those m charge next year. i he new system sould not have caused anyone to stay out, hut the fact is that it did. Freshmen simply saw in the new men who made places the first time, ad ditional sure place debaters and re fused to try with all places full. ! he plan of having a series of tryouts is excellent. It should be kept by all means, and perhaps extended. Hut the men on till teams should be selected at one series of tryouts and given to the coach to use as he thinks they will be most effective. I lie leaders should also be selected by the coach, not as leaders, but simply as hist speakers. The place should not carry with it any honor more than the holder showed himself worthy of in the final debate. If tile place in itself carries honor with it, it gives the coach a dangerous power to promote favorites. Hut the coach should have the right to place the men. Get to Work Early I'lii* midyear examinations are only a few weeks away and it may be worth while to give the freshmen a little friendly advice. hirst, the student's entire college rec ord is largelj determined by his work at this time. A bad mark is hard to live down. Besides, with all chance for honors lost, why try to live it down? Second, probably [more students "tlunk out" at the end of their tirst sem ester than any other time. Such a mis fortune would be considered a disgrace at horn eand would ruin what might be a splendid career, Better not take any chances. I bird, the time to "cram" is during the semester,—not the night before the examination, b very "night before" has its "morning after". It is not yet too late, but it soon will lie A crowd like last night’s makes a debater feel that his work is worth while. Of course they won. Who can now sa> that Oregon is alii for athletics; \nother "side-show" at least is recognized, if not the circus. “Bill" Woods, W, is engaged in en gineering work at \\ asbougal. W ashing ton. I I lie near approach of the famous Halley’s comet, has called to the mind jf Professor Dunn a case of “mistaken identity” that is highly humorous but in spite of the fact that it was “on him”, he has consented to relate it. "I had been invited to attend an ‘at home’ by the Latin instructor in our local high school and to address the class in whose honor the occasion had been planned,” said Professor Dunn concerning the incident. "Happening to note that the date assigned was the eve of the March Ides, the suggestion readily came to my mind to take advan tage of the coincidence and discuss the assassination of Caesar. His deification with the ‘Iuliunt sidus’ (Her. Carm. 1, 12, 47) as the nucleus of my address. Only an hour or so previous to my coming before the assembled company, I was overjoyed to stumble upon waht was to me a most astounding discovery. Armed with it, I expected to take my audience by storm. ■'In Duruy’s History of Rome, Vol, ; III, Sec. 2, page559, foot-note 2, may be found this comment upon the ‘hairy j star' that played such an important } part in the apotheosis of Caesar, 'The comet which appeared at that time was ] i 1 alley's.’ Even that early, although it was March of 1904, public interest was becoming alert over the expected reap pearance of the great comet in 1910, so that the above statement was, to say the lesat, decidedly attractive. The time to give my address was almost upon me, and I had not the slightest hesitation in accepting the dictum of Professor Ma haffy, who, as the English editor of Duruy's History, I knew was responsi ble for the note. My peroration was a magnificent effort, something to this effect. ‘And so, if we are spared to live until 1910, we shall have the pleas ure of looking again upon the blazing emblem that is the soul of our great Julius, jmptiimoirphosed to the realim where it surely belongs, a seat above the greatest of Rome’s gods’. It was not until almost a year atter these March Ides of 1904 that 1 found, to my horror, that, without the leader ship of M. Jules Verne, 1 had been ver itably ‘off on a comet’. In February of 1905, i again took up the theme in a more elaborate vein, recasting it to present before the Faculty Coloquium of the University of Oregon. Somehow, a doubt crept into my conscience about that brilliant finale of my former ad dress, perhaps because, in all the popu lar accounts of the several appearances of the comet and of the historic events with which it was connected, no men tion had elsewhere been made of so sin gular an event as the assassination of Caesar. 1 therefore began a systematic study from an astronomical standpoint and was shocked to learn how far astray I had been unwittingly led. Unlike (ialileo, 1 am only too anxious to pub lish my recantation, in the hope that others may avoid digging the same pit for themselves and pulling their fol lowers therein after them. A glance at the table of reappearances, or, if that is not available, a simple mathematical process, will quickly prove the futility of identifying 1 (alley’s comet with the lulium skills’, for the nearest appear ance to the date in question was prob ably in 11 B. C., thirty-three years after tbi‘ assassination and the celebration of Octavnan's games, when the comet is distinctly said to have appeared. " l his curious but unfortunate error should be given publicity, for the popu larity and widely accepted erudition of the editor are quite apt to disseminate a very gross misconception, to which my own experience bears witness." \s Professor Dunn is at the head