It seems to me significant that Americans have not got the words "don" and "donnish." They are terms of reproach in England, but the very fact that they are in use proves that they are required. They describe what exists. The Americans have no use for the words because they have not got the man or the quality which they name. The teaching staffs of the American universities do not develop the qualities of the don. They do not tend to become a class apart with a special outlook upon life. It is possible to meet a professor—even a professor of English literature—in ordinary society, to talk to him, to be intimate with him and not to discover that he is a professor. Charles Lamb maintained that school-mastering left an indelible mark upon a man, that having school-mastered he never afterward was quite the same as other men. I had a friend once who boasted that he could "spot" a parson however he was dressed, had spotted parsons who were not dressed at all—in Turkish baths. I do not believe that the most careful student of professional mannerisms could detect an American professor out of his lecture room. It is possible that this note of ordinary worldliness in the members of the staff of the American university has a beneficial effect upon the students. It may help to suggest the thought that a university course is no more than a preparation for life, is not, as most of us thought once, a thing complete in itself.
In all good universities there is a broad democratic spirit among the undergraduates. They may, and sometimes do, despise the students of other universities as men of inferior class, but they only despise those of their fellow students in their own university who, according to the peculiar standards of youth, deserve contempt. In American universities this democratic spirit is stronger than it is with us because there is greater opportunity for its development. There are wider differences of wealth—it is difficult to speak of class in America—among the university students there than here. There are no men in English or Irish universities earning their keep by cleaning the boots and pressing the clothes of their better-endowed fellow students. In American universities there are such men and it is quite possible that one of them may be president of an important club, or captain of a team, elected to these posts by the very men whose boots he cleans. If he is fit for such honors they will be given him. The fact that he cleans boots will not stand in his way. The wisdom of medieval schoolmen made room in universities for poor students, sizars, servitors. The American universities, with their committees of employment for students who want to earn, are doing the old thing in a new way; and public opinion among the graduates themselves approves.
On the subject of the higher university education of girls American opinion is sharply divided. There are people there, just as there are in England, who say that the whole thing is a mistake, that it is better for girls not to go to college on any terms, under any system. I suppose that we must call these people reactionary. There cannot be very many of them anywhere. It was a surprise to me to find any at all in America. They are not, I think, very influential. Among those who favor the higher education of girls there are many who believe whole-heartedly in co-education. I had no opportunity of seeing a co-educational college, but I listened to a detailed description of the life in one from a lady who had lived it. According to her co-education is the one perfect system yet hit upon. Its critics urge two curiously inconsistent objections to it. One man, who is a philosopher and also seemed to know what he was talking about, told me that boys and girls educated together lose the sense of sex mystery, which lies at the base of romantic love and consequently do not want to marry. According to his theory, based upon a careful observation of facts, the students of co-educational universities never fall in love with each other or with anyone else. If the system were widely adopted and had this effect upon the students everywhere, the results would certainly be very unfortunate. Another critic, equally well informed, said that the real objection to co-education is that the students do little else except fall in love with each other. This, though no doubt educative in a broad sense of the word, is not exactly the kind of education we send boys and girls to universities to get. It must be very gratifying to the friends of the system to feel that these two objections cannot both be sound.
Co-educational colleges are chiefly to be found in the West, among the newer states. In the East girls get their higher education for the most part in colleges of their own. Smith College for instance has no connection with any of the men's universities. Nor has Vassar nor Bryn Mawr. These institutions have their own staffs, their own courses and examinations, their own rules, and confer their own degrees. Barnard College, on the other hand, is closely connected with Columbia University, occupying much the same position as Girton and St. Margaret's Hall do with regard to Cambridge and Oxford, scarcely as intimately joined to Columbia as Trinity Hall is to Dublin University. I had the opportunity of learning something of the life of Smith College. I was immensely impressed by the spirit of the place, as indeed I was by that of all the girls' schools and colleges which I saw. There was an infectious kind of eagerness about both pupils and teachers. There is a feeling of hopefulness. It is as if life were looked upon as a great and joyful adventure in which many discoveries of good things may be expected, much strenuous work may be done gladly, in which no disillusion waits for those who are of good heart. Not the girls alone, but those who teach and guide them, are young, young in the way which defies the passing of years to make them old. We are not young because we have seen eighteen summers and no more, or old, because we have seen eighty. We are old when we have shut the doors of our hearts against the desire of new things and steeled ourselves against the hope of good. We are young if we refuse, even when our heads are gray, to believe that disappointment inevitably waits for us. The world and everything in it belongs to the young. It is this pervading sense of youthfulness which makes the American girls' colleges so fascinating to a stranger. It is not difficult to believe that the girls who come out of them are able to take their places by the side of men in business life, or if the commoner and happier lot waits them, are well fitted to be the partners of men who do great things and the mothers of men who will do greater things still.
I take it that the American universities, both those for men and women, are the greatest things in America to-day. This, curiously enough, is not the American idea. The ordinary American citizen is proud of every single thing in his country except his universities. He is always a little apologetic about them. He compares his country with England and is convinced that America is superior in every respect, except the matter of universities. When he speaks of the English universities he shows a certain sense of reverence and makes mention of his own much in the spirit of Touchstone who introduced Audrey as "a poor thing, but my own."
CHAPTER XIII
THE IRISHMAN ABROAD
The educated American seems to have a great deal of affection for Ireland, but is not over fond of Irishmen. Our country, considered as an Island situated on the far side of the Atlantic, makes a strong appeal to him. It is a land of thousand wrongs, a pitiful waif on the hard highway of the world. It smells strongly of poetry and music in a minor key, and the American is, like all good business men, an incurable sentimentalist.
It is always pleasant to be loved and it is nice to feel that America has this affection for our poor, lost land. But the love would gratify us much more than it does if there were a little less pity mixed up in it, and if it were not taken for granted that we all write poetry. I remember meeting an American lady who was quite lyrical in her appreciation of Ireland. She had penetrated into the country as far as Avoca, making the trip from Dublin in a motor car. She stayed, so she told me, "in a dear old-fashioned inn in Dublin." She had forgotten its name, but described its situation to me very accurately. I could not possibly make a mistake about it. My heart was hot within me when I suggested that it might have been the Shelbourne Hotel at which she stayed. Her face lit up with a gleam of recognition of the name.
"Yes," she said, "that's it, such a sweet old place; just Ireland all over, and really quite comfortable when you get used to it."
Now the Shelbourne Hotel is our idea of a thoroughly up-to-date, cosmopolitan caravanserai.