“But that’s a very youthful and shallow way of judging, Garvin,” I replied.
“Well, whether you call it youthful, shallow, or what not, that is the way most of the students seem to regard scholarship. They are only interested in it when it means contact with life and the enlargement of the scholar’s ability for civic usefulness. That is the outcome of practical America, I suppose. But for the ‘grind’ who slaves for big marks and the sheer worship of books—and nothing else, why, I don’t have much use for him. On the other hand, if a fellow grinds out big marks to play on the football team in security: why, that’s the fellow that gets the cheer. It’s scholarship plus, with my crowd, and I think you’d better come in the band-wagon with us, Priddy, for whether the professors like it or not, and choose to cling to the seventeenth century exaltation of scholarship per se—note my Latin, Priddy—why, it won’t change matters any.”
“That’s something to think about, Garvin, at any rate.”
“If you observe the students closely, Priddy, I think you’ll find that they do respect scholarship; put it in the very highest possible place of influence—when it has led to something.”
“I am glad I had this talk with you, Garvin. I think I understand the fellows a little better,—I can even forgive the unknown who wrote: Priddy Has A Grouch!”
“Thank you, Al,” replied the editor. “I am the chap!”
If the failure of Scholarship Night—and a dismal one it was—had seemed to indicate little respect for pure academic accomplishment at the College, there soon took place an event which swallowed up that failure in its overwhelming scholarly success and aroused, in the student heart, every last atom of admiration for the academical ideal. Our new President was inaugurated.
Inauguration Day was pre-eminently the real Scholarship Day with the links closely forged between what Garvin called scholarship and accomplishment. The President we were to honor represented the close tie between scholarship and accomplishment. His learning had brought him a world reputation as a scientist, and it was extremely interesting, after the talk with Garvin, to note with what unction the students lingered on the reputation of the President, and how deferentially they spoke the names of this Royal Society and that Foreign Body which had honored him for his work.
Garvin’s paper, weeks before the event, teemed with anticipatory gossip concerning the stellar names in education that were to be printed on the list of college guests. The campus was to be the show ground for the American academic peerage; come to honor our chief! At last even such a loafer in the college as Bridden, who was in danger of losing his degree by reason of his overindulgence in pool: even he expressed a pride and interest in the coming of the scholars: the scholars par excellence.
Even down to so technical a consideration as the language of hoods, the undergraduates manifested fully as much interest as they had been wont to give to baseball batters’ averages. Garvin’s paper came out with a color list by which the college presidents, university chancellors, international statesmen, state officials, seminary heads and the host of lesser academics could be fully interpreted through the colors on the gowns they would wear in the procession: white signifying arts and letters, scarlet theology, purple for philosophy, blue for science, brown for music and so on through the list, which Garvin editorially advised each student to either cut out and have in his hand when the procession moved, or, better still, to carefully memorize it.