Life — October 3, 1889 — page 4: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

“OMhile there's Life there's Hope.” VOL. XIV. OCTOBER 3. 1889. 28 West TWENTY-THIRD STREE’ Published haga! 5 Tharsday, $5.00 a year in advance, postage free. copies, ro cents. Back numbers can be had by 1, bound, dl Vol. II., bound, $10.00; Vols. [1I., 1V., V., VI., VIL, Wi, 1X!, XX. and X17. bound, or in at numbers, at regular rates, Rejected contributions will be destroyed unless accompanied by a stamped and directed envelope. Sabscribers wishing address changed will greatly facilitate matters by sending old address as well as new. No. 353- EW YorK, Singte applying to this office, Nol. HEN the ning Post has an excellent article, it seems a real pity to find fault with it. It did have such an article the other day wherein it set forth what should and what should not be expected of college professors in their relations to the lads placed under their supervision. Ic held that it no part of the duty of a great American college to see that its undergraduates were kept out of harm's way; that it was impossible for colleges to perform such a duty if it were assigned to them, and that it is par- ticularly unworthy to expect college professors to spy out the iniquity of bad young men, and to stand guard surrep- titiously over their outgoings and their incomings. College, in the /ost's opinion, is a place where real life begins, and college boys must go prepared to cope with the ordinary temptations of the world, and to stand or fall according to the stuff there is in them. It is idle for parents of lads who are prone to go to the bad to expect that any college will undertake to keep them straight. That, in the Post's opin- ion, is not what colleges are for. It avers that there is an enormous waste of college endowments in this country on drones and dunces. It would make short work of “men who go to college to amuse themselves,” and it declares that, in its opinion, “colleges should be reserved for studi- ous men about whom their mothers and fathers are not anxious.” . . . ERE, and only here, it is that Lire takes some ex- ception to the /osf’s sagacious observations. It doesn’t feel certain that it would care to go to college with a lot of “studious men about whom their parents were not anxious,” nor is it cocksure that the education that it would get exclusively in such society would be the very best obtain- able. Lire believes that men may make their parents anxious and yet be capable of use to a college and of profit- ing by it. They can be useful as payers of dues for one thing, and the increased income the college derives from them can be spent on giving additional advantages to their fellows. Their presence is worth something, too, as giving their quieter brethren an opportunity to witness the reputed de- lights of a gay life, and to realize their hollowness. There are many things a man need never do in after life if he has had the necessary experience of them in college; and many things he need never do at all if only he has seen them done. Thus, in colleges that permit the presence of some frivolous characters, studious young men are enabled to get, by obser- vation alone, an ample and costly experience of life without being subjected to personal sacrifices either of time or money. ‘Thus it appears that both the funds and the actual didactic abilities of a college are increased by letting in some of those young men as to whom their parents are anxious. . . . T is worth while, too, to consider the young men them- selves. Even though they are defective in studiousness and cause their parents anxiety, should they be utterly thrown out for those reasons alone? There is always the chance that association with studious lads may be a great benefit to them, and, certainly, if they are prohibited in advance from college it is hard to suggest an experiment that may properly be tried with them, inasmuch as home has usually failed already with this sort, ard they are not yet ripe for the gallows. If such young men acquire suffici- ent book-learning to pass the examinations preliminary to getting into a good college, and are willing to make a suffici- ent sacrifice of their personal inclinations to do the work which is indispensable to their continuance there, it is easily possible that they come as near to being in the right place as their perverted natures will permit. . . . iG should not be forgotten, even by the Evening Post, that, though the boy is father to the man, the man is sometimes a very late crop. Some men ripen long after they have left college, but they ripen differently from having been in co.lege. Nor is it invariably the men who have caused their parents the least anxiety, who make the greatest figure in the world, or show themselves best worth educat- ing. General Grant never did much while at West Point (nor for long afterwards) to warrant the expenditure of government money on his education, but when his time finally came, his early training was worth more to his country than a brick house, Bismarck’s time at Gottingen seems to have been put in largely in duelling and drinking punch with John Motley. Nevertheless, he was worth such pains as his professors took with him, . . . IVE the studious youth the best of chances, neighbor, and don’t let them be hindered or cramped by rules which are only needed by roysterers, but don’t throw the other sort out entirely, Give the lad for whom his parents quake a chance, too. He has the makings of character in him, and though such friendships and such education as you can give him may not seem like much now, they may make a heap of difference to him forty years hence. comicbooks.com |