558 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



And then it is fashionable to be in administrative work. Young 

 men come to college asking for a course leading to the college presi- 

 dency. Why not? The administrative officers are mentioned in the 

 local paper oftener than any one else. The professor gets no notice 

 unless it be the college green-goods man who sells intellectual gold bricks 

 to the woman's club. 



Consequence : Did you ever hear of a college fledgling whose supreme 

 passion was to become a great scholar? Exhibit him, if you have, for 

 he is a rarissima avis indeed. No, the premium is not on scholarship, 

 as it is, for example, in the German universities. T4ius it comes about 

 that more and more rarely the really capable scholar does not go over 

 to administrative work. 



How shall we ever rear a race of scholars when there is neither pay 

 nor honor in scholarship? The scant money compensation is patent, 

 and honor is more than money to the idealist, and such, after all, the 

 college professor is. There was a time when the highest ambition of 

 every German youth was to be a poet. Why ? Because two great 

 world-poets were the most honored men in Germany. To-day it is 

 different — every German youth burns to become a soldier, a politician 

 — because these are the honored personages of the realm. 



Who upholds scholarship as a great and valuable possession in 

 America ? Do we do it even in the colleges ? In the smaller colleges 

 the stimulus to scholarship is often wanting. The college library con- 

 sists of some few thousand volumes of, in great part, antediluvian 

 literature, presented perhaps by some alumnus of that early period, a 

 few books for class readings, and a couple dozen journals. And should 

 the faculty ask for more, the trustees answer them like they answered 

 Oliver Twist: Why there's the Encyclopedia Britannica and the whole 

 of the World's Best Literature : What more do you want, you snobs? 



What shall Oliver, do? Oh, occasionally a lively one works hard 

 during vacations and at other times to get something done. But more 

 often he chokes down his intellectual hunger, gets to tinkering with 

 real estate, rubber stock, subsides into nocuous desuetude, and chews 

 his little denominational cud. This brings me to chapter the last, 

 which relates to Eousseau's dictum that a slave can not educate free 

 men. 



Students, especially immature ones, will imitate and model after 

 their teachers. I am aware that the present plan of college studies, 

 which, like a hotel dinner, gives you a lot of scraps, the whole not 

 amounting to anything substantial, precludes a student's getting really 

 interested in any branch of study or in any professor. Nevertheless, 

 students will emulate their teachers. The greater the model now, the 

 better for your boy and girl, and anything or anybody that undermines 

 the respect, dignity and worth of the teacher, that makes him " unf ree " 

 is a drawback to education. 



