From what dim scriptorium?
Whose the name that wrought thee thus,
Ambrose or Theophilus,
Bending, through the waning light,
O’er thy vellum scraped and white!
I hope you know the tune of “Ta-ra-ra-ra-boom-de-ay,” so that you may get the full cultural benefit from this recitation!
However, my little Catholic professor of literature did one thing for me; he let me know of the existence of a poet by the name of Shelley. We read “The Skylark” and “The Cloud” in class, and there came over me a realization of the ghastly farce I was going through in this college. I was near the end of my senior year, but my store of patience gave out, and I presented a letter to the faculty, stating that I was obliged to earn my own living, and requesting that I be allowed two months’ leave of absence. The statement was strictly true, but the implication, that I was going to spend the two months in earning money, was not true; I spent the two months sitting on the bed in an eight by ten hall bedroom in a lodging-house, reading Shelley’s poetry and Emerson’s Essays and the prose of Ruskin and Carlyle. I went back to college and made up my lost months in a week or two, and passed my examinations without either credit or discredit—ranking just in the middle of my class.
I take it that the purpose of education is to discover the special aptitudes of the student, and to foster them. And here was I, a man with one special aptitude; here were a score of teachers, with whom I had been in daily contact for five years; yet I am sure, if these teachers had been told that one man in the class of ’97 would come to be known throughout the civilized world in less than nine years, they would have guessed more than half my class-mates before they guessed me. I am not so egotistical as to imagine that I was the only man in that class who had special aptitudes; if none of the others have developed any, I think I know the reason—the machine had rolled them flat!
CHAPTER III
THE UNIVERSITY GOOSE
Columbia University at the time I went to it had just moved up to its new buildings on Morningside Heights. The center of the group was a magnificent white marble library, built almost entirely for display, and with but little relation to books and those who were to use them. But of this I had no suspicion; I had come now to the real headquarters of education, and I studied the fascinating lists of courses, and my heart leaped, because I was free to choose whatever I wished of all this feast. I was a proud “bachelor of arts,” and declared my intention of becoming a still prouder “master of arts.” To achieve the feat I must complete a year’s course, consisting of a “major” subject and two “minors,” and I must also compose a “thesis.” To register for all this I paid a hundred and fifty dollars, earned by a newly discovered talent for writing dime novels.