joS 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



verbal memorizing will probably enable its 

 fortunate possessor to get off many an apt 

 quotation at tbe dinner-table, and far be it 

 from me to detractTrom that much-longed-for 

 accomplishment; but, after all, the college 

 professes to fit its students for life rather than 

 for its dinner-tables, and in life a happy 

 knack at quotations is in the long run an in- 

 different substitute for the power of close ob- 

 servation, and correct inference from it. To 

 be able to follow out a line of exact, sustained 

 thought to a given result is invaluable. It is 

 a weapon which all who would engage suc- 

 cessfully in the struggle of modern life must 

 sooner or later acquire, and they are apt to 

 succeed just in the degree they acquire it. 

 In my youth we were supposed to acquire it 

 through the blundering application of rules 

 of grammar in a language we did not under- 

 stand. The training which ought to have 

 been obtained in physics and mathematics 

 was thus sought for long, and in vain, in 

 Greek. That it was not found is small cause 

 for wonder now. And so, looking back from 

 this stand-point of thirty years later, and 

 thinking of the game which has now been 

 lost or won, I silently listen to that talk about 

 "the severe intellectual training," in which 

 a parrot-like memorizing did its best to de- 

 grade boys to the level of learned dogs. 



But the case, as presented by Mr. 

 Adams, was really much stronger than 

 any individual experience could make 

 it. He is descended from an illustrious 

 line of scholars and statesmen men 

 eminent in affairs and of large national 

 influence. His great-grandfather and 

 his grandfather were Presidents of the 

 United States, and his father repre- 

 sented this nation as minister to the 

 English court at a very critical period 

 in tbe relations of the two countries. 

 These distinguished men were all gradu- 

 ates of Harvard College, and it must be 

 assumed that they were capable of do- 

 ing the best honor to their opportu- 

 nities. But the representative of the 

 fourth generation appeals to a family 

 experience, extending through nearly a 

 century and a half, in reprobation of 

 the system which he had himself found 

 so worthless and injurious. It was the 

 same old story Greek half-learned, 

 good for nothing, and forgotten, while 

 modern languages had to be acquired 



as indispensable implements of success- 

 ful work in practical life. "We can not 

 give this interesting special history 

 which so effectually clinches the case ; 

 but we quote the reference to the fourth 

 and fifth generations, which shows that 

 the system of fetichistic immolation is 

 still practiced with desperate perversity 

 at Harvard College : 



I come now to the fourth generation, cut- 

 ting deep into the second century. My fa- 

 ther had four sons. We were all brought up 

 on strict traditional principles, the special 

 family experience being carefully ignored. 

 We went to the Latin schools, and there 

 wasted the best hours of our youth over the 

 Greek grammar hours during which we 

 might have been talking French and German 

 and presently we went to Harvard. When 

 we got there we dropped Greek, and with one 



j voice we have all deplored the irreparable 



: loss we sustained in being forced to devote 

 to it that time and labor which, otherwise ap- 

 plied, would have produced results now in- 

 valuable. One brother, since a professor at 



, Harvard, whose work here was not without 

 results, wiser than the rest, went abroad after 

 graduation, and devoted two years to there 

 supplying, imperfectly and with great labor, 



. the more glaring deficiencies of his college 

 training. Since then the post - graduate 



1 knowledge thus acquired has been to him an 



] indispensable tool of his trade. Sharing in 

 the modern contempt for a superficial learn- 



I ing, he has not wasted his time over dead 

 languages which he could not hope thor- 

 oughly to master. Another of the four, now 

 a Fellow of the University, has certainly 

 made no effort to keep up his Greek. When, 

 however, his sons came forward, a fifth gen- 

 eration to fit for college, looking back over 

 his own experience as he watched them at 

 their studies, his eyes were opened. Then 

 in language certainly not lacking in pictur- 

 esque vigor, but rather profane than either 

 classical or sacred, he expressed to me his 

 mature judgment. While he looked with in- 

 expressible self-contempt on that worthless 

 smatter of the classics which gave him the 

 title of an educated man, he declared that 

 his inability to follow modern thought in 

 other tongues, or to meet strangers on the 

 neutral ground of speech, had been and was 

 to him a source of life-long regret and the 

 keenest mortification. In obedience to the 

 stern behest of his Alma Mater, he then 

 proceeded to sacrifice his children to the 

 fetich. 



