“That is the limit!” ejaculated Mr. Brief.
“Oh, no indeed,” said the Idiot. “There’s another step. That’s the gramophone course, in which a man won’t have to leave home at all to secure a degree from any college he chooses. By tabulating his knowledge and dictating it into a gramophone he can send the cylinder to the university authorities, have it carefully examined, and receive his degree on a postal-card within forty-eight hours. That strikes me as being the limit, unless some of the ten-cent magazines offer an LL. D. degree with a set of Kipling and a punching-bag as a premium for a one year’s subscription.”
“And you think that will be a good thing?” demanded the Bibliomaniac.
“No, I didn’t say so,” said the Idiot. “In one respect I think it would be a very bad thing. Such a method would involve the utter destruction of the football and rowing seasons, unless the universities took some decided measures looking toward the preservation of these branches of undergraduate endeavor. It is coming to be recognized as a fact that a man can be branded with the mark of intellectual distinction in absentia, as the Aryan tribes used to put it, but a man can’t win athletic prowess without giving the matter attention in propria persona, to adopt the phraseology of the days of Uncle Remus. You can’t stroke a crew by mail any more than you can stroke a cat by freight, and it doesn’t make any difference how wonderful he may be physically, a Yale man selling dry-goods out in Nebraska can’t play football with a Harvard student employed in a grocery store at New Orleans by telephone. You can do it with chess, but not with basket ball. There are some things in university life that require the individual attention of the student. Unless something is done by our colleges, then, to care for this very important branch of their service to growing youth, the new scheme will meet with much opposition from the public.”
“What would you, in your infinite wisdom, suggest?” asked the Doctor. “The wise man, when he points out an objection to another’s plans, suggests a remedy.”
“That’s easy,” said the Idiot. “I should have what I should call residential terms for those who wished to avail themselves of athletic training under academic auspices. The leading colleges could announce that they were open for business from October 1st to December 1st for the study of the Theory and Practice of Gridirony—”
“Excuse me,” said Mr. Pedagog. “But what was that word?”
“Gridirony,” observed the Idiot. “That would be my idea of the proper academic designation of a course in football, a game which is played on the gridiron. It is more euphonious than goalology or leather spheroids, which have suggested themselves to me.”
“Go on!” sighed the Doctor. “As a word-mint you are unrivalled.”
“There could be a term in baseballistics; another in lacrossetics; a fourth in aquatics, and so on all through the list of intercollegiate sports, each in the season best suited to its completest development.”