not want to seem in my old age to belong to that class of people
who can see no virtue in the present in comparisonn with the
past ; I wish merely to give you my most candid opinion, which I
trust will seem to be a just and fair one. I have spent my life
among college men, and have seen the long lines of college classes
come and go around me, and so I believe I can claim to have had
a verv good chance to judge them accurately. With this little
remark permit me to answer your question.
“ I must say, then, that I do not think our boys have so high
ideals in going to college as of old. There are many evidences of
this. Xo one who comes in contact with our college boys closely
but must feel that somehow they need too often a spur to accom
plish the noblest results. They are too ready to take advantage
of the privilege of ' cuts ’ that are now granted in many of our
colleges. This privilege was unknown in the old days, and if it
had been then one of the college rules I feel pretty certain our
boys would have been too much in earnest to learn the things they
had come to get at college to take advantage of them. There
needs to-day a much higher responsibility on this point than at
present exists. Another evidence of lower standards among our
boys to-day, I cannot help thinking, is to be found in this remark
able multiplication of technical schools that is a marked feature
of our last decades. Mind, Ido not say these schools are not all
right, and that they do not meet a long felt want in our times.
They have come to stay, for they are doing a most noble and
important work.
” But now mind also that we are talking about a comparison in
ideals between the boys past and present. Can it be true that
our young men in these schools have so high an ideal of all-round
culture, so to speak, as those who of old came to college to pur
sue the regulation career of study that we were then all ex
pected to follow? Somehow I cannot help thinking that too
many of our boys are going to these technical schools merely to
settle the question of board and clothes. As one of my friends
used to put it in quaint phrase “the problem of fodder is the
bunting question of history " with too many of these men.
•' Xow I don't say that the question of “ fodder” is not an all
important one to settle. It is a burning question and we all have
to wrestle with it some day, and woe to the fellow who can't solve
it. lam only wishing to say that there are higher questions than
this, and when a young man comes to college to find out the short
The Free Lance.
[November,