"Have you, too, joined the debating circle?" he said, crowding into a place by Stover and adjusting the fire with a square-toed boot.
"Debating circle?" said Stover, surprised.
"Why, this is the verbal prize ring of the college," said Regan, laughing. "We settle everything here, from the internal illnesses of the university to the external manifestations of the universe. Pike can tell you everything that is going to happen in the next fifty years, and so can Brocky—only they don't agree. I'm around to get them out of clinches."
"Reckon you get rather heated up yourself, sometimes, Tom," said Lake.
"Oh, I jump in myself when I get tired of listening."
Swazey, Lake, Ricketts, and Brown in one corner installed themselves for a session at the national game, appropriating the lamps, and leaving the region about the fireplace to be lit by occasional gleams from the fitful hickories.
Brockhurst, the champion of individualism, was soon launched on his favorite topic.
"The great fault of the American nation, which is the fault of republics, is the reduction of everything to the average. Our universities are simply the expression of the forces that are operating outside. We are business colleges purely and simply, because we as a nation have only one ideal—the business ideal."
"That's a big statement," said Regan.
"It's true. Twenty years ago we had the ideal of the lawyer, of the doctor, of the statesman, of the gentleman, of the man of letters, of the soldier. Now the lawyer is simply a supernumerary enlisting under any banner for pay; the doctor is overshadowed by the specialist with his business development of the possibilities of the rich; we have politicians, and politics are deemed impossible for a gentleman; the gentleman cultured, simple, hospitable, and kind, is of the dying generation; the soldier is simply on parade."