XV
ON SHORT COURSES AT COLLEGE
Mr. Pedagog threw down the morning paper with an ejaculation ofimpatience.
"I don't know what on earth we are coming to!" he said, stirring hiscoffee vigorously. "These new-fangled notions of our college presidentsseem to me to be destructive in their tendency."
"What's up now? Somebody flunked a football team?" asked the Idiot.
"No, I quite approve of that," said Mr. Pedagog; "but this matter ofreducing the college course from four to two years is so radical asuggestion that I tremble for the future of education."
"Oh, I wouldn't if I were you, Mr. Pedagog," said the Idiot. "Yourtrembling won't help matters any, and, after all, when men likePresident Eliot of Harvard and Dr. Butler of Columbia recommend theshort course the idea must have some virtue."
"Well, if it stops where they do I don't suppose any great harm will bedone," said Mr. Pedagog. "But what guarantee have we that fifty yearsfrom now some successor to these gentlemen won't propose a one-yearcourse?"
"None," said the Idiot. "Fact is, we don't want any guarantee--or atleast I don't. They can turn colleges into bicycle academies fifty yearsfrom now for all I care. I expect to be doing time in some other spherefifty years from now, so why should I vex my soul about it?"
"That's rather a selfish view, isn't it, Mr. Idiot?" asked Mr.Whitechoker. "Don't you wish to see the world getting better and betterevery day?"
"No," said the Idiot. "It's so mighty good as it is, this bully oldglobe, that I hate to see people monkeying with it all the time. Ofcourse, I wasn't around it in the old days, but I don't believe theworld's any better off now than it was in the days of Adam."
"Great Heavens! What a thing to say!" cried the Poet.
"Well, I've said it," rejoined the Idiot. "What has it all come to,anyhow--all this business of man's trying to better the world? It's justadded to his expenses, that's all. And what does he get out of it thatAdam didn't get? Money? Adam didn't need money. He had his garden truck,his tailor, his fuel supply, his amusements--all the things we have topay cash for--right in his backyard. All he had to do was to reach outand take what we fellows nowadays have to toil eight or ten hours a dayto earn. Literature? His position was positively enviable as far asliterature is concerned. He had the situation in his own hands. Hewasn't prevented from writing 'Hamlet,' as I am, because somebody elsehad already done it. He didn't have to sit up till midnight seven nightsa week to keep up with the historical novels of the day. Art? There werepictures on every side of him, splendid in color, instinct of life,perfect in their technique, and all from the hand of that first of OldMasters, Nature herself. He hadn't any Rosa Bonheurs or Landseers on hisfarm, but he could get all the cow pictures he wanted from the backwindow of his bungalow without their costing him a cent. Drama? Life wasa succession of rising curtains to Adam, and while, of course, he hadthe errant Eve to deal with, the garden was free from Notorious Mrs.Ebbsmiths, there wasn't a Magda from one end of the apple-orchard to theother, and not a First, Second, or Third Mrs. Tanqueray in sight. Music?The woods were full of it--the orioles singing their cantatas, thenightingales warbling their concertos, the eagles screeching out theirWagnerian measures, the bluejays piping their intermezzos, and noItalian organ-grinders doing De Koven under his window from one year'send to the other. Gorry! I wish sometimes Adam had known a good thingwhen he had it and hadn't broken the monologue."
"The what?" demanded Mr. Brief.
"The monologue," repeated the Idiot. "The one commandment. If tencommandments make a decalogue, one commandment makes a monologue,doesn't it?"
"You're a philologist and a half," said the Bibliomaniac, with a laugh.
"No credit to me," returned the Idiot. "A ten years' residence in thisboarding-house has resulted practically in my having enjoyed a diet ofwords. I have literally eaten syllables--"
"I hope you haven't eaten any of your own," said the Bibliomaniac. "Thatwould ruin the digestion of an ostrich."
"That's true enough," said the Idiot. "Rich foods will overthrow anykind of a digestion in the long run. But to come back to the collegetendencies, Mr. Pedagog, it is my belief that in this short-coursebusiness we haven't more than started. It's my firm conviction that someday we shall find universities conferring degrees 'while you wait,' asit were. A man, for instance, visiting Boston for a week will some daybe able to run out to Harvard, pay a small fee, pass an examination,and get a bachelor's degree, as a sort of souvenir of his visit; anotherchap, coming to New York for a brief holiday, instead of stealing aspoon from the Waldorf for his collection of souvenirs, can ring upColumbia College, tell 'em all he knows over the wire, and get asheepskin by return mail; while at New Haven you'll be able to stop offat the railway station and buy your B. A. at the lunch-counter--they mayeven go so far as to let the newsboys on the train confer them withoutmaking the applicant get off at all. Then the golden age of educationwill begin. There'll be more college graduates to the square inch thanyou can now find in any ten square miles in Massachusetts, and ourprofessional men, instead of beginning the long wait at thirty, will bein full practice at twenty-one."
"That is the limit!" ejaculated Mr. Brief.
"Oh, no indeed," said the Idiot. "There's another step. That's thegramophone course, in which a man won't have to leave home at all tosecure a degree from any college he chooses. By tabulating his knowledgeand dictating it into a gramophone he can send the cylinder to theuniversity authorities, have it carefully examined, and receive hisdegree on a postal-card within forty-eight hours. That strikes me asbeing the limit, unless some of the ten-cent magazines offer an LL. D.degree with a set of Kipling and a punching-bag as a premium for a oneyear's subscription."
"And you think that will be a good thing?" demanded the Bibliomaniac.
"No, I didn't say so," said the Idiot. "In one respect I think it wouldbe a very bad thing. Such a method would involve the utter destructionof the football and rowing seasons, unless the universities took somedecided measures looking toward the preservation of these branches ofundergraduate endeavor. It is coming to be recognized as a fact that aman can be branded with the mark of intellectual distinction inabsentia, as the Aryan tribes used to put it, but a man can't winathletic prowess without giving the matter attention in propriapersona, to adopt the phraseology of the days of Uncle Remus. You can'tstroke a crew by mail any more than you can stroke a cat by freight, andit doesn't make any difference how wonderful he may be physically, aYale man selling dry-goods out in Nebraska can't play football with aHarvard student employed in a grocery store at New Orleans by telephone.You can do it with chess, but not with basket ball. There are somethings in university life that require the individual attention of thestudent. Unless something is done by our colleges, then, to care forthis very important branch of their service to growing youth, the newscheme will meet with much opposition from the public."
"What would you, in your infinite wisdom, suggest?" asked the Doctor."The wise man, when he points out an objection to another's plans,suggests a remedy."
"That's easy," said the Idiot. "I should have what I should callresidential terms for those who wished to avail themselves of athletictraining under academic auspices. The leading colleges could announcethat they were open for business from October 1st to December 1st forthe study of the Theory and Practice of Gridirony--"
"Excuse me," said Mr. Pedagog. "But what was that word?"
"Gridirony," observed the Idiot. "That would be my idea of the properacademic designation of a course in football, a game which is played onthe gridiron. It is more euphonious than goalology or leather spheroids,which have suggested themselves to me."
"Go on!" sighed the Doctor. "As a word-mint you are unrivalled."
"There could be a term in baseballistics; another in lacrossetics; afourth in aquatics, and so on all through the list of intercollegiatesports, each in the season best suited to its completest development."
"It's not a bad idea, that," said Mr. Pedagog.
"A parent sending his boyto college under such conditions would have a fairly good idea of whatthe lad was doing. As matters are now, it's a question whether theundergraduate acquires as much of Euripides as he does of Travis, and asfar as I can find out there are more Yale men around who know all aboutBob Cook and Hinkey than there are who are versed in Chaucer, Milton,and Shakespeare."
"But what have these things to do with the arts?" asked Mr. Whitechoker."A man may know all about golf, base and foot ball and rowing, and yetbe far removed from the true ideals of culture. You couldn't give a mana B. A. degree because he was a perfect quarter rush, or whatever elseit is they call him."
"That's a good criticism," observed the Idiot, "and there isn't a doubtin my mind that the various faculties of our various colleges will meetit by the establishment of a new degree which shall cover the case."
"Again I would suggest that it is up to you to cover that point," saidMr. Brief. "You have outlined a pretty specific scheme. The notion thatyou haven't brains enough to invent a particular degree is to my mindpreposterous."
"Right," said the Idiot. "And I think I have it. When I was in collegethey used to confer a degree upon chaps who didn't quite succeed inpassing their finals which was known as A. B. Sp. Gr.--they were mostlyfellows who had played more football than Herodotus who got them. TheSp. Gr. meant 'by special favor of the Faculty.' I think I shouldadvocate that, only changing its meaning to 'Great Sport.'"
Mr. Pedagog laughed heartily. "You are a great Idiot," he said. "Iwonder they don't call you to a full professorship of idiocy somewhere."
"I guess it's because they know I wouldn't go," said the Idiot.
"Did you say you were in college ever?" sneered the Bibliomaniac, risingfrom the table.
"Yes," said the Idiot. "I went to Columbia for two weeks in the earlynineties. I got a special A. B. at the beginning of the third week formy proficiency in sciolism and horseplay. I used a pony in anexamination and stuck too closely to the text."
"You talk like it," snapped the Bibliomaniac.
"Thank you," returned the Idiot, suavely. "I ought to. I was one of thefew men in my class who really earned his degree by persistent effort."
The Genial Idiot: His Views and Reviews Page 16
