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THE ~K * 



POPULAR SCIEN0¥ 

 MONTHLY. 



NOVEMBER, 1891 



UNIVERSITY EXTENSION". 



By C. HANFOED HENDEESON. 



ONE can scarcely fail to notice, in the intellectual life of 

 America, how very rapidly a new thought sweejDS across the 

 continent. It travels with almost the speed of the whirlwind. 

 The storm center is commonly Boston or New York or Philadel- 

 phia, and progress is toward the westward. At once the impulse 

 is felt in Chicago and Denver and San Francisco. A new book, 

 a new creed, or a new social ideal easily gains the popular ear. 

 Like the Epicureans and Stoics, we delight to hear a new thing. 

 It can not be said that this interest is always, or even generally, a 

 profound or fruitful one. But it has at least this advantage, that 

 it secures a speedy hearing for such ideas as are put in a form 

 suitable for assimilation, and this alone is no inconsiderable gain. 

 The educational movement known as university extension is 

 an admirable illustration of this national alertness and versatility. 

 It is a movement capable of very definite presentation and of 

 calling up equally definite mental images. As a result, it is now 

 familiar in name at least to the majority of our people, and it has 

 become so in a surprisingly short space of time. Returned trav- 

 elers from England have whispered the name in private for sev- 

 eral years past. Certain phases of the movement, such as the 

 Toynbee Hall experiment of planting a colony of culture-loving 

 men in the arid district of London, have for some time attracted 

 attention on both sides of the water. But, as a distinct object of 

 public interest and discussion in America, university extension is 

 hardly two years old. It was not until the winter and spring of 

 1890 that the movement took rank as a question of the day. Out- 

 side of the larger and more interested cities, and possibly even 

 within their borders, it may still be that the name of the move- 



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