Part 13 (1/2)
”Oh, that's different,” said the Idiot. ”I'm a Sammycrat.”
”A what?” cried the Idiot's fellow-boarders in unison.
”A Sammycrat,” said the Idiot. ”I'm for Uncle Sam every time. He's the best ever.”
XV
ON SHORT COURSES AT COLLEGE
Mr. Pedagog threw down the morning paper with an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of impatience.
”I don't know what on earth we are coming to!” he said, stirring his coffee vigorously. ”These new-fangled notions of our college presidents seem 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 of reducing the college course from four to two years is so radical a suggestion that I tremble for the future of education.”
”Oh, I wouldn't if I were you, Mr. Pedagog,” said the Idiot. ”Your trembling won't help matters any, and, after all, when men like President Eliot of Harvard and Dr. Butler of Columbia recommend the short course the idea must have some virtue.”
”Well, if it stops where they do I don't suppose any great harm will be done,” said Mr. Pedagog. ”But what guarantee have we that fifty years from now some successor to these gentlemen won't propose a one-year course?”
”None,” said the Idiot. ”Fact is, we don't want any guarantee--or at least I don't. They can turn colleges into bicycle academies fifty years from now for all I care. I expect to be doing time in some other sphere fifty 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 better every day?”
”No,” said the Idiot. ”It's so mighty good as it is, this bully old globe, that I hate to see people monkeying with it all the time. Of course, I wasn't around it in the old days, but I don't believe the world'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 just added to his expenses, that's all. And what does he get out of it that Adam didn't get? Money? Adam didn't need money. He had his garden truck, his tailor, his fuel supply, his amus.e.m.e.nts--all the things we have to pay cash for--right in his backyard. All he had to do was to reach out and take what we fellows nowadays have to toil eight or ten hours a day to earn. Literature? His position was positively enviable as far as literature is concerned. He had the situation in his own hands. He wasn't prevented from writing 'Hamlet,' as I am, because somebody else had already done it. He didn't have to sit up till midnight seven nights a week to keep up with the historical novels of the day. Art? There were pictures on every side of him, splendid in color, instinct of life, perfect in their technique, and all from the hand of that first of Old Masters, Nature herself. He hadn't any Rosa Bonheurs or Landseers on his farm, but he could get all the cow pictures he wanted from the back window of his bungalow without their costing him a cent. Drama? Life was a succession of rising curtains to Adam, and while, of course, he had the 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 the other, and not a First, Second, or Third Mrs. Tanqueray in sight. Music?
The woods were full of it--the orioles singing their cantatas, the nightingales warbling their concertos, the eagles screeching out their Wagnerian measures, the bluejays piping their intermezzos, and no Italian organ-grinders doing De Koven under his window from one year's end to the other. Gorry! I wish sometimes Adam had known a good thing when he had it and hadn't broken the monologue.”
”The what?” demanded Mr. Brief.
”The monologue,” repeated the Idiot. ”The one commandment. If ten commandments 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 this boarding-house has resulted practically in my having enjoyed a diet of words. I have literally eaten syllables--”
”I hope you haven't eaten any of your own,” said the Bibliomaniac. ”That would ruin the digestion of an ostrich.”
”That's true enough,” said the Idiot. ”Rich foods will overthrow any kind of a digestion in the long run. But to come back to the college tendencies, Mr. Pedagog, it is my belief that in this short-course business we haven't more than started. It's my firm conviction that some day we shall find universities conferring degrees 'while you wait,' as it were. A man, for instance, visiting Boston for a week will some day be able to run out to Harvard, pay a small fee, pa.s.s an examination, and get a bachelor's degree, as a sort of souvenir of his visit; another chap, coming to New York for a brief holiday, instead of stealing a spoon from the Waldorf for his collection of souvenirs, can ring up Columbia College, tell 'em all he knows over the wire, and get a sheepskin by return mail; while at New Haven you'll be able to stop off at the railway station and buy your B. A. at the lunch-counter--they may even go so far as to let the newsboys on the train confer them without making the applicant get off at all. Then the golden age of education will begin. There'll be more college graduates to the square inch than you can now find in any ten square miles in Ma.s.sachusetts, and our professional men, instead of beginning the long wait at thirty, will be in full practice at twenty-one.”
”That is the limit!” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mr. Brief.