836  Pharmacy  and  Pre-Medical  Schools,   j Amv{°cu* arm> 
lege  hall  has  a  different  effect  upon  your  character  than  association 
with  the  same  man  under  any  other  circumstances.  I  believe  the 
contact  of  the  young  man  with  his  fellows  is  good  for  his  develop- 
ment, but  why  that  contact  has  to  be  sanctified  by  an  ordained  col- 
lege of  arts  of  science  seems  obscure. 
As  for  the  social  life  of  a  college  that  is  a  thing  which  varies 
with  the  individual  school,  not'  with  the  class  of  institution.  When 
we  contrast,  for  example,  conditions  at  a  great  university  like  Colum- 
bia— with  its  thousands  of  pupils,  relatively  few  of  whom  are  in 
residence  at  the  college,  contending  with  the  distractions  of  a  great 
city  in  whose  midst  it  is  situated — to  those  at  a  little  college  like 
Haverford — located  in  almost  rural  surroundings,  with  its  two  or 
three  hundred  pupils  practically  all  of  them  living  on  the  campus — it 
seems  ridiculous  to  talk  about  the  atmosphere  of  college  life  as  a 
fixed  entity.  If  we  grant  for  the  sake  of  argument  that  there  is 
some  advantage  to  a  boy  being  thrown  into  such  intimate  contact  with 
two  or  three  hundred  of  his  fellows  that  he  comes  to  know  most  of 
them  by  their  first  name,  evidently  it  is  not  to  be  obtained  in  a  large 
metropolitan  university;  on  the  other  hand,  if  we  believe  that  there 
is  some  advantage  in  having  a  common  interest  with  two  or  three 
thousand  fellows  of  his  age  with  most  of  whom  he  has  not  even  a 
nodding  acquaintance,  obviously,  he  cannot  reap  that  benefit  at  any 
one  of  the  hundreds  of  small  colleges  scattered  throughout  the  coun- 
try. 
The  "atmosphere"  of  the  college  class  room  is  only  too  often  still 
that  of  school-boy  days:  "If  I  can  fool  the  teacher  (or  in  this  case 
professor),  into  believing  that  I  have  done  work  that  I  have  not  done 
that  proves  how  smart  I  am."  It  does  not  seem  to  enter  the  mind 
of  the  pupil  that  he  is  there  for  the  purpose  of  acquiring  knowledge 
which  is  going  to  enable  him  to  earn  his  living  and  to  take  his  place 
among  the  workers  of  the  world. 
In  striking  contrast  to  this,  in  a  college  of  pharmacy  and 
science  the  presence  in  the  class  of  men  who  are  engaged  in  direct 
preparation  for  their  life  work  helps  to  awaken  a  realization  in  the 
whole  student  body  that  play-days  are  for  children,  and  to  engender 
an  atmosphere  conducive  to  serious  study.  This  mental  attitude  as 
well  as  the  knowledge  actually  acquired,  is  a  valuable  asset  to  the 
student  of  medicine. 
