Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

The inculcation of a kindred spirit in all our colleges is devoutly to be wished. It exists already in some of the older ones, especially in the New England States, and in not a few of the very recently-established ones. But even where it does exist it has not full sway: it does not set, as it should set, the keynote to college life in all its variations. And in very many colleges it is unable to establish itself because of gross disorder. Should this opinion seem harsh and sweeping, the reader, if a student or a graduate, has only to recall to mind the instances that he himself must have observed of discontent and disorder growing out of trifling causes and culminating perhaps in a "class-strike." Let him consider the waste of time, the ill-temper, the censorious, invidious spirit engendered by this fermentation, the loss of faith in the conduct, and even the honesty, of the faculty. Can he conceive of anything more likely to frustrate all the aims of college study? Yet in nine-tenths of the cases of public disorder it will be safe to assume that the dormitory system lies at the base of the evil. Where it does not occasion the grievance, it furnishes at least the machinery for carrying matters to a direct issue. Community of life suggests of itself community of action. The inmates of a dormitory acquire insensibly the habit of standing by one another. This is so evident that it needs no proof. But an illustration of the workings of the dormitory system and its opposite in one and the same place will not come amiss. When the Cornell University was founded, some of the trustees opposed the erection of dormitories. Others, assuming that the people of Ithaca, to whom a college was a novelty, could not or would not furnish sufficient accommodation, argued that dormitories were an absolute necessity. They carried the point: the Cascadilla was converted into a large boarding-house for both professors and students, and the greater part of South University was laid out in student-rooms. Both buildings were full. This state of affairs lasted during the first year and part of the second. Disturbances of various kinds were not infrequent; and although no one of them was very serious, yet in the aggregate they were a severe tax upon the faculty's time and patience. But before the end of the second year many of the students discovered that life in town was more comfortable, and accordingly they gave up their university rooms. At the opening of the academic year 1870-1871 perhaps three-fourths, certainly two-thirds, were lodged in town. The change was significant. During the entire year, although individual students were disciplined for individual offences, the faculty was not once forced to punish public disorder. This phenomenon will appear still more remarkable when we consider that meanwhile the so-called "class-feeling" had sprung up, and that students admitted from other colleges had endeavored to introduce certain traditional practices. The year 1870-1871 was perhaps too good to be repeated. The next year witnessed at least one discouraging exhibition of student-manners, and since then there have been explosions from time to time. For all that, the general tone at Cornell is excellent. The transitory disturbances seem to leave behind them no abiding ill-will, and there is certainly less friction between faculty and students than at any like institution. Nowhere in this country is college life more free from petty annoyance, dislike and mistrust, and hereditary prejudices. It should be added, that those students who now reside in the university buildings belong almost exclusively to what is known as the working corps. They are type-setters in the printing-office, or are engaged upon the university farm, or in the workshops connected with the department of the mechanic arts. Their time is too valuable to them to be wasted. The experience of the Sheffield Scientific School resembles that of Cornell. In one respect it is even better. This school has never had a dormitory system. Its managers, imbued thoroughly with the German and French spirit of study, have resisted successfully from the outset every inducement to follow the usual college system. Although growing up in the shadow of one of the oldest colleges in the country, and exposed to formidable competition, and still more formidable criticism, the Sheffield Scientific has adhered strictly to its self-appointed mission. It has regarded instruction in science as its sole object. Whatever tended to this object has been adopted: everything else has been rejected as irrelevant. We are not concerned in this place with the general reputation of the Sheffield Scientific at home and abroad. Singling out only one of its many merits, we can point to it with pride as the first institution to solve effectually the knotty problem of discipline. The means of its success are anything but occult. It has made its pupils feel from the moment of entrance that they were young men, and must act as such. It has refused to encumber itself with expensive and useless dormitories, and the faculty has in the main left the students to themselves. But whenever interference became necessary, it has acted promptly, without undue haste or severity, and also without vacillation. Here, at least, we do not find the ruinous practice of suspending a student one week, only to take him back the next. The mere existence, then, of the Sheffield Scientific--to say nothing of its success--by the side of the powerful corporation of Yale College is fatal to every argument in favor of the dormitory system.

Most of our colleges are situated in small towns. To this circumstance, more than to any other, perhaps, is due the exclusiveness which, in its exaggerated manifestations, is so puzzling to the city visitor. Petty items of life and character, intrigues, quarrels and social jealousies have an importance which the world outside cannot understand. They affect the college more or less directly. The professor finds it doubly hard to exercise his vocation in a place where the details of his home life are known and exposed to comment. The student's power for mischief is increased. He has only too much reason for believing that he is indispensable from the business point of view. Besides, as every one knows, close contact in narrow circles has a tendency to cramp the mind. Trifling annoyances, real or imaginary, are apt to rankle in the spirit unless they be brushed away by the quick, firm touch of the great world. _Kleinstädtisches Leben_, despite its many advantages, fails to develop the burgher in every direction. It leaves him one-sided, if not exactly narrow-minded. Professor C.K. Adams, in his admirable essay upon "State Universities,"[1] has touched upon this point with reference to studies. His words should be carefully weighed: "If the best education consisted simply of making perfect recitations and keeping out of mischief, the smallest college would be incomparably the best college. But the best education is far more than that. Perhaps it is correct to say that it is an inspiration rather than an acquisition. It comes not simply from industry and steady habits, but far more largely from that kindling and glowing zeal which is best begotten by familiar contact with large libraries and museums and enthusiastic specialists.... It is the stir, the enthusiasm, the unceasing activity, and, above all, the constant intercourse with men of the same pursuits and the same ambitions, that develop the greatest energies and secure the highest successes."

[Footnote 1: _North American Review_, Oct., 1875.]

Professor Adams, it will be observed, is contrasting small colleges with larger ones. We are not bound by his concessions in favor of the former. And we may also take the liberty of advancing his comparison a step by claiming for large cities, no less than for large colleges, the superiority over small ones. Without intending disrespect, we may even put the direct question, Would not your own university, for whose advantages you are contending, be better off to-day had it been placed in Detroit instead of Ann Arbor? Is there not something dwarfing in the atmosphere of a small country town, where character is undiversified and life uneventful? Were books the sole source of knowledge, were the acquisition of ideas and principles the sole aim, we could wish for our professors and students nothing better than monotony of life. But success, whether in professional or scholarly pursuits, depends largely upon temper and practical judgment--qualities which are developed by contact with the busy world. Whoever has had the experience, knows that life in large cities is both stimulating and sobering. It enlarges one's range of ideas and sympathies: it also keeps idiosyncrasies within proper bounds. The individual does not lose his individuality, but rather intensifies it: he loses only the exaggerated sense of his own importance. We must regard it, then, as unfortunate that so many of our seats of learning are out of the world, so to speak. Our professors would probably do their work better--that is to say, with greater freshness of spirit--and would exert a wider influence, were they thrown more in the company of men of the world. In like manner, our colleges would play a more direct part in the affairs of the country. The history of the German universities suggests a lesson. Is it a mere accident that the oldest and the youngest German universities are in large cities? In the Middle Ages, before the political organization of the country had fairly entered upon its morbid process of disintegration, we find Vienna, Prague[2] and Leipsic heading the list. Subsequently, each petty duke and count, moved by the sense of his autonomy, sought to establish a university of his own. The Reformation increased the spirit of rivalry. Most of these second- and third-rate universities have passed away or have been merged in others. The three youngest, Berlin, Munich and Strasburg, are all in large cities, and are all three the direct offspring of political and educational reorganization. As Germany is now constituted, it would be impossible to found a new university in a small town. Such places as Jena, Erlangen, Greifswald, Rostock, Marburg and Giessen barely hold their own against the strong movement in favor of concentration.

[Footnote 2: Heidelberg comes between Vienna and Leipsic, but Heidelberg was then a much more important town than at present.]

The wholesome influence of large surroundings upon students is perhaps even more marked than upon professors. History teaches us with singular clearness that small towns are precisely the ones in which student character is distorted out of all proportion. No better example can be found than the University of Jena. From the time of its foundation down to the present century the name of Jena stood for all that was wild, absurd, and outrageous. In a village whose permanent population did not exceed four thousand, students were crowded by hundreds and thousands. To speak without exaggeration, they ruled Philistia with a rod of iron, in defiance of law and order, and not infrequently of decency itself. On this point we have an eye-witness of unquestionable veracity. In 1798, Steffens, a young Dane brimful of enthusiastic admiration for German learning, arrived in the course of his travels at Jena. He gives the following account of his first impressions of German student manners:[3] "I looked out into the neighborhood so strange to me, and a restless suspicion of what was to come ran through my mind. Then we heard in I the distance a loud shouting like the voices of a number of men, and nearer and nearer they seemed to come. Lights had been brought shortly before, and, as the uproar was close upon us, a servant burst in to warn us to extinguish them. We asked with curiosity why, and what the shouting mob wanted. We suspected, indeed, that it was students. The servant told us that they were on their way to the house of Professor A----, who was unpopular with them--I knew not why--to salute him with their Pereat, or college damnation. The cry of some hundred students grew plainer and plainer. 'Out with lights!' was called, and just then we heard the panes of glass clatter when the warning was not quickly enough complied with. I confess that this circumstance, occurring so soon after my arrival, filled me with a kind of gloom. It was not such things as this that had called me to Jena: these were not the voices which I had wished and expected to hear, and my first night was a sad one."

[Footnote 3: _German Universities_. Translated by W.L. Gage. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1874. Steffens little imagined at the time that he was destined to become a German professor.]

Jena, be it said in her praise, is no longer what she was: her students no longer break window-panes or perform the _Gänsemarsch_ or elect their beer-duke of Lichtenhain. The great herd has scattered, and the few who are left dwell with their professors in peace. But has the spirit of brutality passed wholly away? Perhaps loving parents who have placed their sons under the "protecting" influence of some quiet country town believe so. It is almost a pity to disturb their faith. Yet truth is uncompromising. Let us record and ponder the fact--epithets are superfluous--that in the year of grace 1874, in a small college town not one hundred miles distant from the City of Brotherly Love, students supposed to be guided and restrained by influences more distinctively "Christian" than any that ever mitigated the barbarism of Jena, could become utterly lost to all recollection of father and mother, brother and sister, could forget their own manhood, could steal under cover of night to the house of an unpopular professor and bombard the windows, to the peril of his wife and mother, and of his child in the cradle.

Truly, we have been surfeited with mistaken praise of small colleges and rural virtue. We have a right to demand that our colleges, whatever they may undertake or omit, shall teach at least the first lesson of life--manliness. This lesson is not best learned by withdrawing one's self from the world, burying one's self in an obscure and unrefined village, foregoing social intercourse with amiable men and women, and wrapping one's self in a mantle of traditional prejudice. President Porter, although a staunch defender of the existing college system, concedes its weakness. He says (p. 168): "It is no paradox to say that the first essay of the student's independence [i.e., the independence of college as contrasted with school] is often an act of prostrate subserviency to the opinion of the college community. This opinion he has little share in forming: he does little else than yield himself to the sentiment which he finds already formed.... It [this community] is eminently a law unto itself, making and enforcing such laws as no other community would recognize or understand--laws which are often strangely incongruous with the usually received commandments of God and man.... No community is swayed more completely by the force of public opinion. In none does public opinion solidify itself into so compact and homogeneous a force. Before its power the settled judgments of individual opinion are often abandoned or overborne, the sacred associations of childhood are relaxed, the plainest dictates of truth and honor are misinterpreted or defied."

It may surprise us to find the author contending, only a few pages farther on, for "the civilizing and culturing influences which spring from college residence and college associations." The truth is that the case has two sides to it. No friend of education could wish to see student opinion or student sentiment banished wholly from student life--to reduce study to a mere intellectual process without any trace of _esprit de corps_. Some such spirit is not only good in itself, but is natural and unavoidable. Three hundred or four hundred young men cannot associate freely day by day for years in succession, pursuing the same studies under the guidance of the same teachers, without establishing a certain community of sentiment and action, from which the student's intellectual efforts must derive a great share of their nourishment. Yet, admitting the principle, we cannot justify or palliate the excess to which it has been carried. We insist upon the observance of certain limits, which no man, whether old or young, learned or unlearned, is at liberty to transgress. And when these limits are transgressed we have a right to regard the offenders as all the more culpable because of their advantages. The circumstance that they come of a "good stock," as it is called, and are pursuing liberal studies, is only an aggravation of the offence. We expect youthful extravagances, waste of time, neglect of opportunities, exaggerated self-importance, a supercilious way of looking down upon the outside world--these are all phases of growth, and are usually short-lived--but we cannot tolerate any violation of the rights of property, any overawing of individual conscience, any breach of public order, any disregard of public decency. Such offences we must resent and punish, not only for the sake of those injured, but in the best interests of the offenders themselves. We cannot afford to let the most promising class of our young men entertain even for the brief period of four years false and pernicious views of the fundamental principles of life. It is the duty of every community to suppress error _en voie de fait_, wherever it may occur. And if it is our duty to suppress, it is no less our duty to prevent. Common sense and experience teach us that danger must arise from gathering large numbers of young men in places too small to hold them in check. Are we not at liberty to borrow an example from the history of President Porter's own college? In the days when the president was a young professor, Yale was a small college and New Haven was a small town. The name of the college then was, to speak mildly, notorious. The Yale of thirty or forty years ago seemed to personify everything that was obnoxious and lawless in our college life: in no other place did the conflict between "town" and "gown" assume such dimensions and lead to such deplorable results. Yet the Yale of to-day, although the number of students has trebled, will compare favorably with any college or university. The students, without having lost a particle of true manliness and independence, riot less and learn more: they show in every way that they are better students and better citizens. Wherein, then, lies the secret of the change? Evidently, in the circumstance that the city has outgrown the college. New Haven is no longer an insignificant town, but has become the seat of a large local trade and the centre of heavy manufacturing and railroad interests. Like other cities, it has established a paid fire department and a strong police force for the protection of all its residents, the college included. It is no longer overshadowed, much less over-awed, by the college. On the contrary, the observation forces itself upon the visitor in New Haven that the college, notwithstanding its numerous staff of able professors, notwithstanding its great body of students, its libraries and scientific collections, is far from playing the leading part in municipal matters. It is only one among many factors. Life and its relations are on an ampler scale: the wealth and refinement of the permanent population are great, and are growing unceasingly. In a few years more New Haven will be fairly within the vortex of New York. This change, which has come about so gradually that those living in it perhaps fail to perceive it readily, has affected the college in many ways. It has made the life of the professors more agreeable, more generous, so to speak, and it has toned down the student spirit of caste. The young man who enters Yale feels, from the moment of matriculation, that he is indeed in a large city, and must conform to its regulations--that there are such beings as policemen and magistrates, whom he cannot provoke with impunity. Even were this all, it would be gain enough. But there is another gain of a far higher nature. The student perceives that outside his college world lies a larger world that he cannot overlook--a world whose society is worth cultivating, whose opinions are backed by wealth and prestige. It does not follow from this that he ceases to be a student. Companions and study make him feel that he is leading a peculiar life, that he is a member of an independent organization. But he does not feel--and this is the main point--that he has retired from the world or that he can set himself up against the world.

In this connection we have to be on our guard against the opposite extreme--namely, the inference that the larger a city the better for the college. The very largest cities are perhaps not favorable to the growth of institutions of learning. Even in Germany, where the university system rests upon a different basis and adapts itself more readily to circumstances, the leading capitals, Berlin and Vienna, are at a disadvantage. The expenses of living are so great as to deter all but the wealthy or the very ambitious, and the pomp and pageantry of court and nobility, the numerous _personnel_ of the several departments of state, finance, war and justice throw the less ostentatious votaries of science and letters into the shade. Nevertheless, the universities of Berlin and Vienna can scarcely be said to be threatened with permanent decline. The governments of Prussia and Austria recognize the necessity of a great university in a great capital to give tone to the administrative departments and to resist the spread of the spirit of materialism. Besides, the resident population of each of these cities is entitled to a university, and would be sufficient of itself to support one. We may rest assured, therefore, that the Prussian government will act in the future as it has done in the past, by sparing no efforts to make the Frederico-Gulielma the head of the Prussian system in fact as well as in name. Nevertheless, it must be admitted that the present hard times and the unsettled state of society in Berlin tend to restrict the number of students. The remarkable contrast presented in the sudden growth of the Leipsic University shows how even matters of education are influenced by social and economic laws. This Saxon city seems marked out by Nature for a seat of learning. It combines almost all attractions and advantages. It is accessible from every quarter, the climate is good for North Germany, and the neighborhood is pleasant, although anything but picturesque. The newer houses are well built, rooms and board are not expensive. The inhabitants are wealthy and highly cultured, the book-trade is enormous, and the banking-business considerable. Yet trade does not move with the fever-heat of speculation: the life of the city is quiet and regular. Amusements of a high order are within the reach of every one. These minor attractions, combined with the more important ones offered by the university itself, will explain to us how it is that Leipsic has taken the foremost rank. Students who are used to city ways, and who would have chosen Berlin ten or twenty years ago, now come here because of the cheapness of living. Others, tired of the monotony of the smaller university towns, come to get a foretaste of the world that awaits them after the completion of their studies. The temper of the students is admirable. Rarely if ever do they betray any traces of the hectoring spirit which still lingers at Heidelberg, for instance. But for the display of corps-caps and cannon boots and an occasional swagger in the street, one might pass an entire semester in Leipsic without realizing that the city contains three thousand students. Undoubtedly, the young men perceive, like their colleagues of Yale, that their surroundings are too much for them.

Another prolific source of trouble is the class system. Whether this system is to be maintained as it is, or to be modified, or to be abandoned for another more in accordance with the needs of the age, are questions which must be kept in abeyance. The answer will depend upon the view which we take of higher education in the main. Meanwhile, let us consider the system in its operations during the past and at the present day. Here, as so often before, Germany affords us a warning example of the dangers consequent upon the recognition of class distinctions. The comparatively harmless practice of _Deposition_--a burlesque student-initiation which sprang up in the sixteenth century and obtained a quasi sanction from no less a person than Luther--degenerated in the seventeenth century into _Pennalisimus_. Newly-matriculated students, called Pennalists (the modern term is _Füchse_), were maltreated by the elder ones, the Schorists, and were pillaged and forced to perform menial services "such as a sensible master would hesitate to exact of his servant[4]." The Schorists considered themselves a licensed corporation. To give an idea of their deportment, not merely toward the younger students, but even toward the university itself, it will suffice to state that they conducted their orgies at times in the public streets without fear or shame. In 1660, during the student insurrection at Jena, they assaulted and dispersed the Academic Senate in session. The governmental rescripts of those days are taken up with accounts of the evil and the means proposed for curing it. The matter was even brought before the Imperial Diet. Pennalismus was not suppressed until the close of the century, after the various governments had resorted to the most stringent measures. Such excesses have, of course, never been committed in America; yet we observe the same spirit of insubordination to superiors and domination over inferiors betraying itself in the New World. When we hear of "rushing," "hazing," "smoking-out" and the like, we must admit to ourselves that the animus is the same, although the form be only ludicrous. And what shall we say to performances such as the explosion of nitro-glycerine? Much may be urged in extenuation of the offences of the German students in the seventeenth century. Their sensibilities were blunted by the horrors of a Thirty Years' War; they had been born and reared amid bloodshed and rapine; some of them must have served in the campaigns of Banér, Torstenson and Wrangel, where human life went for nothing, and honor for less than nothing. Some of them, perhaps, could not name their parents. They were waifs of the camp, their only education the crumbs of knowledge picked up in the camp-school mentioned by Schiller in his _Wallenstein_. Our students, on the contrary, are anxiously shielded against temptation and are carefully trained for their work. Why, then, should they be the only set of persons to disobey, as a set, the rules of public order? The answer suggests itself: Because they have acquired the habit of joint action without the sense of individual responsibility.

[Footnote 4: The words of the decree of the Imperial Diet, 1654. See Von Raumer, _Geschichte. der Pedagogik_, iv. 45.]

The advantages of the present system of instruction by classes are not to be overlooked. Yet they are attended with one serious evil. The members of a class, reciting day by day, term after term, upon the same subjects, acquire the notion of a certain average of work. The class, as a unit, has only so much to learn, and the professor is not to exceed this maximum. Furthermore, each class gauges its work by the work of its predecessors. The Sophomore class of this year, for instance, is not willing to do more than the Sophomore class of last year. To introduce more difficult text-books, or to increase the number of hours, or to lengthen the lessons, is injustice. The notion of unity extends itself to social relations. Each member considers himself identified with his comrades. Tradition--everywhere a power, and especially powerful in college--establishes nice distinctions. It lays down the rule that one class shall not wear beaver hats or carry canes--that another class shall steal the town-gates on a particular night of the year or publish scurrilous pamphlets. Each member of the class must do certain things or must refrain from them, not because he wishes to, but because he is a member of the class. The strength of this community of feeling and interests can be estimated only by one who has experienced it. Were its operations confined to the relations among students, they would be less formidable. We might perhaps shrug our shoulders and leave the young men "to fight it out among themselves." The case becomes quite different, however, when a class arrays itself in opposition to its professor or to the entire faculty. Then we see plainly the dangers of insubordination. The immature and inexperienced set themselves above their elders: they arrogate to themselves the right of deciding what they shall learn, how much they shall learn, how they shall learn it. And, being a class, they stand or fall as a class. They exhibit tenacity of purpose and an unscrupulous use of improper means. Many a professor has learned to his cost what it is to be defied by his class.

An example will be more instructive than vague generalities. About seven years ago a gentleman was engaged by one of our colleges to take charge of a new department until a permanent appointee might be found. The resident faculty committed one blunder after another. It added the new study outright without adjusting it to the previous studies. It also fixed upon Saturday as the day for beginning. Thus, the students were prejudiced against their new instructor before they had even seen him. Besides, they regarded the innovation as an "interloper." The victim to student rule may now tell his own story: "I took the 6 A.M. train Saturday morning from the city. After breakfast I was directed by the president to go to a certain room, unaccompanied, to meet the Sophomore class. One hundred hyenas! My entrance was greeted with groans, 'Ahas!' 'Hums!' I spent half an hour in the vain attempt to explain the subject. Before I was half through I had made up my mind to return to the city by the first train. On leaving the room I met Professor ----, who comprehended the situation at a glance. He said that he had been through it all himself--that it had taken him two years to get control of his classes. I learned afterward that this is the usual time allowed for such purpose. The president on meeting me, said in his usual abrupt, nervous brogue, 'It's nothing against the men, sir! It would be just the same if it were anybody else, sir! (!!!). Just go on, sir.' I finally decided 'to go on, sir,' but I hardly retain my self-respect when I remember how I submitted for three months to a series of petty annoyances unworthy the lowest _gamins_ of New York. Students purposely made mistakes to give others an opportunity to groan. The Sophomore class was divided into two sections after the third week. By dint of strict watching, which so absorbed my attention that I could do little in the way of instruction, I succeeded in obtaining tolerable order. Usually, a painful silence was observed, every one knowing that there was a hand-to-hand fight going on for the mastery. The Junior class could not be divided because of other studies. Their recitations (?) continued to be a bedlam, a pandemonium. I afterward learned that some students, who already had some knowledge of the subject, remained on purpose to create disturbance. One of them, a son of a trustee, I caught blowing snuff through the room. It was a favorite trick of the class to drop a bundle of snuff in the stove. Each one of the fifteen recitations that I had with this class was spoiled by some disturbance. On two occasions some of them stole the keys of the room and locked me in with part of the class. Fortunately, I was able to drive back the bolt. The president was less lucky. Twice he and his entire class were obliged to climb down from the window by a ladder. There is no use in multiplying words. The treatment to which I was subjected was shameful. What made it even worse was, that the authorities permitted such conduct toward one whom they had invited to take the initiative in beginning a new study. It was a perfectly-understood thing that I had accepted the temporary appointment more to relieve the college than for my own benefit."

The writer of the above is now one of the leading professors in another college. His name and reputation are among the best in the land. He writes concerning his present position: "We have here two hundred and fifty students, all told. The utmost courtesy prevails, both in the recitation-room and in the streets. During the five years that we have been in existence as a college I do not remember that a single rude act has been committed toward any professor. I attribute this to a variety of circumstances. We began with a small body of students, who gave tone to the subsequent ones. We have no dormitories. The college is in a city too large to be controlled by students. Nothing could be pleasanter than the intercourse between town and college. Not a gate has been carried off, no loud shouting is heard. If there are night-revels, nobody ever hears of them. We have no prizes, no honors, no marking system. We hold rigid examinations, and watch the tendency to negligence if it shows itself."

One circumstance may lead us to take a more hopeful view of the situation. The colleges--and consequently the classes--are growing larger. At Yale and Harvard, for instance, the classes exceed two hundred on entrance. It is clear that so large a body cannot cohere very firmly. The sense of homogeneousness is lost. Furthermore, the class is divided into sections and sub-sections. The occasions on which the student can see his entire class together are becoming comparatively few. The so-called elective studies will also help to keep down the class spirit. In many colleges the curriculum is no longer an inflexible routine. On reaching a certain standing the student, although not entirely free to select his studies, has at least an option. He may take German instead of Greek, French in place of Latin, advanced mathematics or the natural sciences in place of both. Whatever estimate we may set upon the intrinsic value of such options, we can scarcely doubt their efficacy in the matter of discipline. The class which branches out on different lines of study has already ceased to be a class. The results of the system of free selection established at the Cornell University are very instructive. We find here three or four courses of study, now running parallel, now overlapping one another, and outside of them the elective students who follow partial courses or specialties. The university has scrupulously refrained from the official use of the terms Senior, Junior, Sophomore and Freshman, and arranges the students' names in the index in alphabetical order. The sections in certain departments, especially in the modern languages and history, are made up of students of all four years. Even the courses themselves are not inflexible. The policy of accepting _bonâ fide_ equivalents has been adopted, and has given satisfaction to both teachers and pupils. There are probably not twenty students in the university at this moment who have recited side by side on exactly the same subjects and in the same order for three years. Hence the absence of any strong class feeling. Although those who have attended the university the same number of years may try hard at times to convince themselves and others that they are a class in the ordinary sense, they meet with little success. Individual freedom of opinion and conduct is the rule, and such a thing as class coercion is an impossibility. At one time it was argued by the adversaries of the university that this laxity must result in lowering the standard of scholarship. But recent events lead us to the opposite conclusion. The Saratoga regatta last summer proved that the Cornell students are not wanting in muscle, and the inter-collegiate contest of this winter shows still more conclusively that they are not wanting in brains. Cornell entered in four of the six contests, and won four prizes--one second and three firsts. Two of these first prizes, be it observed, far outrank the others as tests of scholarship--namely, those in Greek and in mathematics. No shallow theory of luck will explain this sudden and remarkable success. The older colleges will do well to inquire into causes, and to ask themselves if their young rival is not possessed of a new power--if sturdiness of character and independence of thought are not more efficient than mere routine. After all, is it surprising that the institution which is most liberal should attract to itself the most progressive minds?

JAMES MORGAN HART.

SONNET.

I saw a garden-bed on which there grew,
Low down amid gay grass, a violet,
With flame of poppy flickering over it,
And many gaudy spikes and blossoms new,
Round which the wind with amorous whispers blew.
There came a maid, gold-haired and lithe and strong,
With limbs whereof the delicate perfumed flesh
Was like a babe's. She broke the flowering mesh
Of flaunting weeds, and plucked the modest bloom
To wear it on her bosom all day long.
So in pure breasts pure things find welcomest room,
And poppied epics, flushed with blood and wrong,
Are crushed to reach love's violets of song.

MAURICE THOMPSON.

THE HOUSE THAT SUSAN BUILT.

Susan--Susan Summerhaze--was twenty-nine, and had never had a lover. You smile. You people have a way of smiling at the mention of a maiden lady who has never had a lover, as though there was a very good joke in the matter. You ought to be ashamed to smile. You have a tear for the girl at the grave of her lover, and for the bride of a month in her widow's cap, and even for her who mourns a lover changed. But in each of these cases the woman has had her romance: her spirit has thrilled to enchanted music; there is a consecrated something in her nature; a tender memory is hers for ever.

Nothing is so pathetic as the insignificant. Than a dead blank, better a path marked by--well, anything, perhaps, except dishonor. The colorless, commonplace life was especially dreary to my Susan, because of a streak of romance--and a broad streak it was--that ran from end to end of her nature.

It's another provoking way you people have of laughing at romantic young women. Sentimental, you call them. I tell you it's the most womanly thing in the world to be sentimental. A woman's affections reaching out toward a man's heart is as much a part of Nature, and just as pretty a thing in Nature, as the morning-glory--or let us take the old and oft-used yet good illustration of the ivy and the oak. When the woman's reaching affections attain the sought heart, everybody cries out, "How sweet and tender and graceful!" But if they miss of the hold, then there is derision. Here, as everywhere else, there are cheers for success and no pity for failure.

Well, however you may receive it, the truth must be acknowledged: my Susan was sentimental. She had had her longings and dreams, and an abundance of those great vague heartaches which only sentimental people can have. She had gone through with the whole--the sweet hopes, the yearning expectancy, the vague anxiety, the brooding doubt, the slow giving up--the reluctant acceptance of her fading life. Her romance died hard. Very gradually, and with many a protest, the woman of heartaches and sentiment glided into the practical and commonplace maiden lady who served on all sorts of committees and watched with sick people.

At an early age, when she was barely sixteen, the suggestion had been forced on Susan that it was her duty to spread her wings and leave the paternal nest to earn her living. Of course she went to teaching. That's what such people as Susan always do in like circumstances. At first her earnings went into the family fund to buy bread for little mouths that were not to blame for being hungry, and shoes for little feet that did not know wherefore they had been set to travel life's road. But after a while a portion of Susan's salary came to be deposited in bank as her very own money, to have and to hold. She had now reached the giving-up period of her life, when the heartaches were dulling, and the nameless longings were being resolved into occasional lookings back to the time when there had been hopes of deliverance from the commonplace. Having tasted the sweets of being a capitalist, Susan came in process of time to be eager at money-getting and at money-saving and at speculating. The day arrived when my sentimental Susan had United States bonds and railroad stocks, and owned a half acre in city lots in a great, teeming, tempestuous State metropolis.

It was at this period in her affairs that Susan received a gift of fifteen hundred dollars from her bachelor uncle Adolphus, "as a token," so the letter of transmission read, "of my approval of your industry and of your business ability and successes, and as a mark of my gratitude for your kindness to me twenty-one years ago when I was sick at your father's house. You were the only one of my brother's children that showed me any consideration."

"Twenty-one years ago!" exclaimed Gertrude, Susan's younger sister, when she had read the letter through. "Why, that was before I was born! How in the world could I show him consideration? I wish to goodness he'd come here now and get sick. I'd show him consideration: I'd tend him like an own mother."

"Susie didn't tend him like an own mother," said Brother Tom, who was two years younger than Susan. "I remember all about it. All she did for him was to keep the flies off with an apple-tree limb, and she was for ever letting it drop on his face."

"I recollect all about it," said Susan: "I pity myself now when I remember how tired and sleepy I used to get. The room was always so quiet--not a sound in it but the buzzing of the lazy flies and poor uncle's hard breathing. I used to feel as though I were in prison or all alone at a funeral."

"But self-abnegation has its reward, Susie," said Brother Tom, lifting his eyebrows and shrugging his shoulders.

"Oh, I'm free to acknowledge that I performed the duties at that bedside very reluctantly," Susan answered. "I had many a cry over my hard fate. Indeed, I believe I always had to wash off the tear-stains before going to the task. I can recall now just how the little red-eyed girl looked standing before the glass with towel and brush. But still, I did keep the flies off, and I did bring uncle fresh water from the well, and perhaps I deserve a reward all the more because the work was distasteful."

"Mother used to try to make me do it," said Brother Tom. "I remember how I used to slip away from the table while she was pouring out father's fourth cup of coffee, and put for the playground, to escape that fly-brush. I wasn't a good boy, alas! or I might now be a happy man with all my debts paid. I wish my mother had trounced me and made me keep those flies off Uncle Adolphus."

Brother Tom was one of those people who are always trying to say and look funny things. Sometimes he succeeded, and sometimes he didn't.

"Anyhow, I think it's a shame," Gertrude said, pouting--"downright mean for Uncle Adolphus to give you all that money, and never give me a cent."

"Very likely." Susan replied dryly.

"Well, it is, Susie. You've got lots more money now than you know what to do with: you don't need that money at all."

"Don't I?"

"No, you don't, Susie: you know you don't. You never go into society, and you wear your dresses the same way all the time, just as Grandma Summerhaze does. But I'm just making my _début_"--and Gertrude flushed and tossed her head with a pretty confusion, because she was conscious of having made a sounding speech--"and I need lots of things, such as the rest of the girls have."

"My dear Gertrude," began Brother Tom, "'beauty unadorned'--"

"Oh, do, pray, Tom, have mercy upon us!" Gertrude said testily. "Unfortunately, I happen not to be a beauty, so I need some adorning. Moreover, I don't admit that beauty can do without adorning. There's Minnie Lathrop: she's a beauty, but she wouldn't improve herself by leaving off flowers and ribbons and laces, and dressing herself like a nun. Dear me! she does have the loveliest things! Mine are so shabby beside them. I'm about the tag-end of our set, anyhow, in matters of dress. I think, Susie, you might give me a hundred or two dollars."

"To waste in ribbons and bonnets?" asked business-woman Susan.

"Why, Susie, how you do talk! A body would think you had never worn a ribbon, and that you'd gone bareheaded all the days of your life. But you needn't talk: it's not so long ago but I can remember when you were as fond of dress as any girl in the city. I remember how you used to tease mamma for pretty things."

"Which I never got, even though I was earning them over and over." Susan spoke half sadly, half bitterly.

"Well, you ought to have had nice things, Susie, when you were in society," Gertrude insisted. "Girls can't get married if they're shabby and old-fashioned."

"That's true," said Susan gravely.

"I think," continued her sister, "it's the meanest feeling, the sheep-ish-est"--Gertrude syllabled the word to make sure of her hold on it--"in this world to know that the gentlemen are ashamed to show you attention. Now, I'm cleverer and better-looking than lots of girls in our set--Delia Spaulding, for instance--but I don't have half the attention she receives, just on account of her fixings and furbelows."

"And Miss Spaulding always manages to keep ahead in those sublimities," said Brother Tom.

"Yes," assented Gertrude briskly. "No matter what on earth the rest of us girls get, Delia Spaulding manages to have something to cast us into the shade. It makes me so mad! Now, last week at Mrs. Gildersleeve's, when I dressed for the party I thought I looked really nice. I felt a complacency toward myself, as Margaret Pillsbury would say. But when I got to the party, there was Delia Spaulding prinked out with such lights and shades and lustres that I looked plain as a Quaker in comparison with her--or with any of the other girls, for that matter. Do you know, Susie, what the feeling is to be always behind in dress?"

"Yes," Susan answered, a piteous shadow coming into her face as memories of the heart-burning days were evoked, "but I am glad to have done with all the vanity and heartache that comes of it."

"But yet, Susie, you ought to know how to feel for me."

"I do know how," Susan answered.

"Then why don't you help me across some of the heartache?"

"I might help you into a worse heartache by my meddling," Susan suggested.

"You don't want anybody to marry you because you dress well and are stylish?" said Brother Tom, undertaking to explain Susan's meaning.

"I don't know that I want anybody to marry me for any reason," Gertrude flashed out, her cheeks flushing, "but I like to go, once in a while, to young people's gatherings, and then I like to be dressed so that gentlemen are not ashamed to be seen with me."

"A fellow ought to have pluck enough to stand up for the merit of a young lady, no matter how she's dressed."

"Now, Tom, for pity's sake, don't talk heroics," said Gertrude. "I've seen you at parties shying around the poorly-dressed girls and picking out the pretty-plumaged birds. I know all about your heroism. I'm not blaming you, you understand: I don't like to dance or promenade with a gentleman not well dressed. Next to looking well yourself, you wish your partner to look well. That's nature.--But what are you going to do with your fifteen hundred dollars, anyhow, Susie?"

"I shall add something to it and build a house on one of my lots."

"'Pon my soul!" said Brother Tom, laughing.

"How perfectly absurd!" exclaimed Gertrude. "Suppose your house should burn down as soon as it's finished, as the First Congregational church did?"

"I'd get the insurance on it, as the Congregational church didn't."

"What in the world do you want with a house? Are you going to live in it yourself? Are you going to get married?" asked Brother Tom.

"I have two objects in building the house," Susan explained. "One is to secure a good investment for my money: the other is to exercise my ingenuity in planning a model house."

"And in the mean time I am to keep on being Miss Nobody," Gertrude said warmly, "and lose all the chances of fortune. I wouldn't have believed, Susie, that you could be so hard-hearted;" and tears began to gather in Miss Gertrude's pretty eyes. "It must be that you want an old-maid sister for company," she added with some spite.'

Tom went out of the room whistling. He was apt to run if he perceived a fight waxing. He had a soft place in his silly heart for his pretty young sister. He wished Susan would do something for Gertrude: he thought she might. He'd feel considerably more comfortable in escorting Gertrude to parties if she ranked higher in the dress-circle. He'd help her if he could, but he was already behind at his tailor's and at Hunsaker's cigar-shop.

"I'm invited to Mrs. Alderson's next week," Gertrude continued, "and I've nothing on earth to wear but that everlasting old white muslin that I've worn five times hand-running."

"I heard you say that Amanda Stewart had worn one dress to all the parties of this season," Susan remarked.

"Amanda Stewart can afford to wear one dress: her father's worth millions, and everybody knows it. Everybody knows she can have a dozen new dresses for every day of the year. But we poor folks have got to give ocular demonstration of our ability to have new dresses, or nobody will ever believe that we can. Everybody knows that I wear that white muslin because I can't afford any other, I do wish I could have a new dress for Mrs. Alderson's: it will be a dreadfully select party. I've rung all the changes possible on that white muslin: I've worn pink trimmings, and white trimmings, and blue trimmings, and I've worn flowers; and now I'm at my wit's end."

"I wish I were able to advise you," Susan said.

"Advise me?" Gertrude exclaimed impatiently. "What good would advice do? It takes money to get up changes in evening dresses."

"You poor little goose!" said Susan with a grave smile, "I suppose I was once just as foolish. Well, here are twenty-five dollars you may have. It is really all I can spare, for I mean to go at building my house immediately."

"Susie, you're a duck!" cried the delighted Gertrude, eagerly taking the bills. "I can get along nicely with twenty-five dollars for this time, but, oh dear! the next time!"

But Susan did not heed her sister's foreboding cry. Getting pencil and paper, she was soon engaged in sketching the ground-floor of a cottage house. It was to cost about twenty-six hundred dollars. This was years before the day of high prices, when a very cozy house could be compassed for twenty-six hundred.

The following three weeks were very busy weeks for Susan, though all she did was to work at the plan of her house. Her mother grumbled. Brother Tom made his jokes, and Gertrude "feazed," to use her own word. The neighbors came and went, and still Susan continued to sit with drawing-tools at her desk, sketching plan after plan, and rejecting one after another.

"I declare, Susie," said her sister, "I don't believe Christopher Wren gave as much thought to the planning of St. Paul's as you have to that cottage you're going to build. I believe in my heart you've made a thousand diagrams."

"Well," Susan retorted, "I don't suppose anybody's been hurt by them."

"You wouldn't say that if you had to clear up the library every morning as I have to. Those sketches of yours are everywhere, lying around loose. I have picked them up and picked them up, till they've tired me out. 'Parlor, dining-room, kitchen, pantry:' I've read this and read it, till it runs in my head all day, like 'rich man, poor man, beggar-man, thief.' I've marked off the figures on all the papering in this house into 'parlor, dining-room, kitchen, pantry."