THE NEXT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 285 



In more than one line of public business he sees evidences of a friendly 

 desire for cooperation between business managements and the general 

 public. 



It is probable that few persons, even few college professors, avail 

 themselves of these privileges or heed these invitations and even urgent 

 entreaties. Yet the very fact that such opportunities are given the 

 public is at once a safeguard to the organization making them in that 

 it forestalls carping criticism, and at the same time it affords an outlet 

 to the ill humors that would otherwise poison the minds of even reason- 

 able men. The situation is precisely the same as that involved in the 

 resumption of specie payments, as long as men can not get a dollar in 

 gold for every dollar of paper money they hold, they will continue to 

 demand gold; when every paper dollar can be redeemed in gold at its 

 face value, men prefer the more convenient paper bills to the gold coin. 



But no " book of suggestions " now hangs in the office of a college 

 president, no slips calling for ideas are circulated by boards of trustees 

 among college faculties, no invitations to report leaks, screws loose, or 

 balky window shades are sent out by managers of college buildings, no 

 notice is posted in any college building asking college professors to 

 register complaints of the failure of other college employees to have the 

 lantern ready at the hour appointed for the lecture or to set up on 

 time a piece of apparatus necessary for an important experiment. 



Then, too, the college professor would like to have the next college 

 president not only listen to his suggestions, but even go so far as to 

 occasionally ask him for opinions ! As it is, the college president when 

 he first meets his faculty and in his public inaugural address states his 

 own conception of the function of a college and outlines what his policy 

 is to be in connection with the particular institution over which he has 

 been called on to preside. It is not on record that he has ever asked the 

 members of the faculty what their opinions are on these questions. He 

 may not be an alumnus of the college or have ever served on its faculty, 

 yet election to the presidency of an institution with which he has no 

 personal connection and with whose history he can have been but imper- 

 fectly acquainted is assumed to endow him with omniscience and his 

 utterances are received as those of a prophet. The college professor 

 would sometimes like to play the role of prophet ! 



The near-professor passed a pleasant hour as he reorganized the 

 office of the college presidency, and then he turned to his Quentin 

 Durward and to the conversation between the Scot and the Bohemian 

 who boasted of his liberty. 



"But you are subject to instant execution, at the pleasure of the Judge." 

 "Be it so," returned the Bohemian; "I can but die so much the sooner." 

 ' ' And to imprisonment also, ' ' said the Scot ; ' ' and where, then, is your 

 boasted freedom?" 



"In my thoughts," said the Bohemian, "which no chains can bind." 



