On the next page we find some sketches, seeming to indicate that the “prom” is a kind of college kissing game, and that at the end of this game the girl lies in a drunken swoon. Later on we find three drawings, “The Famous Prom Soak,” which tell us in three funny ways that the “prom” is a place where both boys and girls get drunk and have a headache the next morning. A little farther on occurs an illustration of a boy and girl who are conversing:
“I know something that beats the Prom.”
“What?”
“Buy a car, and park some place.”
A little later we learn: “If it’s stag, it’s a souse-party.” A little later we see a girl walking on an electric-light wire, and it is explained to us, “A modern girl can’t be shocked.”
I think I have quoted enough. I leave it to the impartial reader to decide the question—whose heads are empty at the University of Wisconsin? Is it the little group of devoted idealists of the Social Science Club, who in the face of ridicule and scolding have brought a series of writers and public men, both radical and conservative, to discuss modern problems before the student body? Or is it the little set of snobbish fraternity men, who run the social and political life of the university, and edit its publications for the advertising of their own sensuality and cynicism?
CHAPTER L
EDUCATION F. O. B. CHICAGO
There was one American captain of industry with a monstrously developed bump of acquisitiveness; as he described himself: “I am a great clamorer for dividends.” It was frequently charged that in the early days his clamoring—or at any rate that of his subordinates—did not stop at arson and burglary; it is certain that it did not stop at railroad rebates, “midnight tariffs,” and numerous other violations of law. By such means he made himself master of the oil industry of the country, and was on the way to acquiring the railways and the banks and the Child’s restaurants. He had made one or two hundred millions of dollars, and was busily turning it into one or two billions; but he found rising against him a clamor of public execration, and the poor rich man, whose second most conspicuous bump was of fear, began casting about for some way to take the curse off himself.
About that time he met an educator—one of these typical American combinations of financial shrewdness and moral fervor, a veritable wizard of a money-getter, a “vamp” in trousers, a grand, impressive, inspirational Chautauqua potentate. The old oil king was completely captivated. We can imagine him going home to the privacy of the royal bed-chamber, or wherever it is that oil kings and queens exchange domestic confidences. “Say, Laura, I met a fellow today—by crackie, he’s a wonder! He’s a professor of Semitics, or pyrotechnics, or something or other, I forget just what—but he knows everything there is, and he’s going to build me a university and make me the greatest philanthropist in America!”
“Now, John,” says the oil queen, “you better be careful and hold on to your money. The Lord is able to take care of people’s souls, and they don’t need this newfangled modern learning.”