Oh rather give me a whole-hearted fool, with his eternal grin, than one of these sombre unimpressible concretions of torpedo-stricken clay.”
Nescio. “There are here, likewise, even as every where, many who can stop at no medium, but carry reasonable freedom to unwarrantable license. Because it is both pleasant and right to spend some time in general, and above all, in female society, some therefore, in their society fling away all their time, and, with their time, fling away character, and knowledge, and happiness, and worth. Because it is not well to be always bending over the learning of the present, and listening to the eloquence of the past, some therefore, double, wheel, march, and countermarch through these dusty streets during the long hours of a summer’s day, and when they catch a glimpse at the shadow of a female form, they experience a momentary heaven. Others, remembering that it is irrational to crucify the senses, and mortify the flesh, smoke, eat, and sleep, continually. Others, hearing that as well profit as delight may be reaped from the inspection of fancy’s fairy finger-work, are on the tiptoe of panting expectation for each miserable novel that falls lifeless from the press. And thus it was, thus it is, thus it will be.”
Pulito. “But idleness—idleness is the student’s bane. It is astounding how we throw away our time, and our best time—our spring-hour of life. Time is the medium of acquisition, and, losing that, we lose all. I am no Utopian in theory, nor visionary in practice: neither am I free from the follies I deplore. But the strides which might be made in our collegiate course, would be mighty and amazing.”
Nescio. “I agree with you. Every ordinary mind, by more judicious application, might accomplish double what it does. I do not mean that just twice as much would be read, or acquired; but that the mind would be twice as far advanced. It would not only have received twice the strength, and twice the beauty, from the studies it had actually traversed, but would be doubly fitted to grasp, conquer, and improve whatever might afterwards occur. The progress of the mind is in geometrical ratio. Every new and liberal idea, that is gained by a boy of twelve, is a capital which will return with yearly and enormous interest. It is analogous to the gaining of worldly wealth, where you must hew your slow and narrow path from nothing to competence; but from competence to opulence, the road is broad and easy.”
Pulito. “I cannot divine the modality (as the schoolmen might say) of some minds—the manner, in which they operate. For I know of those, who for four years have toiled with desperate firmness, and are what they were. They seem to have pursued a mill-horse track, without the remotest conception that there was aught else of value in the universe beside. Now I complain not of the rigor or of the nature of our course. Stern application is our only hope, and the course of authors we peruse, is perhaps as good as could be devised; but it is the spirit with which they study. They consider what they here gain, not as a mean, but as an end. Every man, who would be ‘aut Cæsar, aut nullus,’ and whose eye goes forward to the ‘immensum infinitumque’ of Tully, must generalize—must view things relatively—must consider every thing, not as a whole, but as a part. If one possess this generalizing spirit, I care not how undivided be his attention to the college course; for I believe that there is in the books of the first three years, beauty and grandeur and weight, sufficient to justify, nay demand, almost entire attention. For instance, to gain a perfect intimacy with Horace—not an intimacy with his words merely, and sentiments—but an intimacy with his beauties—with his soul—would require one month of the severest study; and yet such an intimacy is requisite to justify studying him at all: for if he is not to be appreciated—if that evaporating something, wherein he differs so widely from a dull Latin proser, is not to be seen and felt—you might as well have been reading Cato upon gardening, or Vitruvius upon architecture. But these fellows in studying a foreign tongue, give the general sense in hap-hazard English, without gaining any insight into the philosophy of mind, or the theory of language.”
Apple. “I think, moreover, that we ought to be more conversant with the sciences. Some of the details may, perhaps, be superfluous; but surely no one can claim to be a liberally-educated gentleman, without a general acquaintance with all, and a perfect knowledge of some of those departments. Whatever may have been my former obliquities, or short-comings in these studies, I am determined to retrieve them all. I have begun with attempting to square the circle, upon which great problem I have employed two weeks.”
Nescio. “Ha! Ha! do you approach the goal!”
Apple. “I cannot say that I do very rapidly; but I feel increased acuteness of perception. I think I might discover this grand secret, could I hit upon some method of reducing the circle to linear measurement. My nearest approximation is to make a circle of a string, and then quadrate its sides by the introvention of a square surface of board. Of course, I have the perimeter and square contents of the board, and if I could fit the latter accurately to the string, the work is done, and I am Apple the Great. But ‘hic labor, hoc opus est.’”
Pulito. “Ha! Ha! Be not wearied in well doing, Dumpling; you have opened on the right scent, (erige aures, atque dirige gressus.)”
Tristo. “But there is a more serious view to be taken of this matter, and one to which we must all open our eyes sooner or later, and well will it be for us if we take counsel while the storm is yet lowering, rather than look back with despairing, remorseful eye when ruin is in the retrospect. The day will come when he, who has squandered his abilities, and perverted his passions, will ‘begin to be in want,’ when mortified pride and conscious inferiority will ‘bite like a serpent, and sting like an adder’—a day, when the busy idleness, the trifling engagements, and the languid excuses, which now lull all suspicion of an actual waste of time, will be forgotten, and nothing but the results will be visible. Then, one hasty, reverted glance, without any minute calculation, will inform us, that by our thriftless expenditure, when we might have economized to some purpose, we are compelled to be idle and insignificant; when we feel idleness to be a disgrace, and insignificance a torment. And why are not we alive to all this? Why do we not feel it, and show that we feel it, by our actions, when we can thus in theorizing, ‘put on the spectacles of age?’ The melancholy maxim of the ancients explains it—