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Though absent several months during this period, I kept up with my class, and came out near the head of the seventeen who composed it. Toward the close of my course, I began to suspect that it was not doing for me what it should; and I was not long out of college till I felt that a good deal was lacking to make me an educated man. I have since learned very clearly, it seems to me, what was defective in my collegiate instruction. The ancient languages were wretchedly taught. It used to be said of our Latin professor that he was a good mathematician, and would greatly have preferred a chair in that science, or in English literature-he has written poetry that is a good deal above the average, but the chair of Latin happenning to become vacant he applied and was elected. He was no teacher in an eminent degree, if that expression be allowable. The time spent in the class-room seemed to drag heavily on and we not only got short lessons, but hurried through the recitations. Albeit, he was rather popular with the boys for the reason that he assigned light tasks and was satisfied with slovenly work. him; The Greek professor, who, for the most part, instructed the class of which I was a member, was probably as incompetent a personality for the work he was appointed to perform as ever occupied a like chair. It was said, indeed, that he was not elected because he knew Greek, but because he had a rich father-in-law who was disposed to give money to that same college. I believe he afterwards gave some two thousand dollars. Even we students could not help seeing that his lessons, no less than ours, had been grubbed out with Lexicon and Grammar, in advance of the class, so little spontaneity was there in his teaching. Of course, they were always made as short as possible, upon one pretext or another, a majority of the class, of course, abetting the professor's ignorance. I find, on comparing notes with many college graduates, East and West, that our experiences and observations have been much alike. I do not wonder that the ancient classics have come into il repute. The wonder is that they were not put out of the colleges almost entirely. Under such a regime as I have described it would have been a great gain to the student, little matter what had been substituted, if it had been well taught. Too often, unfortunately, the short-sighted policy of trustees leads to the election of professors on narrow lines of expediency, and the cause of education is the loser. I may be mistaken, but I believe it is in the end a losing policy. The very thing that ought to be insisted on as of prime importance, efficiency, is the last to be considered. Of the collegiate studies, I suppose Greek has fared the worst. If the Olympian gods once laughed at the spectacle of Hephaistos trying to skip about the banqueting hall like a nimble-legged waiter, they have had many a guffaw at the presumption of numberless fellows who have in recent times professed to teach the language in which Homer wrote. It was high time that a reformation dawned. Much has been done; yet even to-day it is not always absolutely certain that the efficient man will go into the vacancy when there is an expediency candidate in the field. In a general way, my college days profited me greatly, and it was largely my own fault that I did not get still greater good out of them. I had some conscientious teachers, who, unfortunately, did not teach those branches to which I took most kindly. The preparation of my lessons did not require half of my time, and I read a great deal. No English literature was taught in class, yet at graduation I knew at first hand the leading works of every noteworthy English writer of prose or verse. I studied Spanish, correcting my written exercises with a key, and learned to read it readily. I took private lessons in Hebrew and laid the founda tions of a fair knowledge of that language. My room-mate was a fine musician and we practiced together a good deal, he teaching me many things that I did not know about this art. Our professor of Latin was an excellent pianist, and I learned from practical experience to rate his musical acquirements higher than his linguistic. Edward Everett Hale says somewhere that the good of a college is not in the things it teaches, but is largely to be got from "the fellows" that are there, and one's association with them. This has been a good deal my own experience; for a more wide awake, jolly, and "smart" set of fellows than were eleven of the coterie of about a dozen to which I belonged, I venture to say, were never found together at any college. My thoughts take on a soberer hue when I think that the survivers are scattered from the Atlantic almost to the Pacific, from our Northern to our Southern border, and that there is not the slightest probability that I shall see half of them in the flesh again. Nevertheless, I can not help thinking that it does not represent an entirely wholesome condition of affairs when one's teachers are so little remembered in comparison with associates, especially in small colleges, where professors and students come much in contact. Part of the misfortune in my case was that most of the professors were "too awfully dignified" to commingle much with persons so far beneath them as they seemed to regard us students. They heard our recitations, but none of us thought of going to any of them for private aid, counsel or advice. They and we dwelt upon spheres whose orbits approached each other on an average once in twenty-four hours, five days in the week. One of them said one day in class, half jokingly, it is true, that it was the misfortune of college professors to be compelled to come into contact with immature minds-like ours, doubtless. How it may be elsewhere I do not know; but I am certain that at my alma mater during my college years the tricks played on the authorities were caused almost wholly by the belief in the minds of the boys that they were having little sympathy from above. They would take occasion now and then to remind the potentates that there was plenty of life and vigor at the bottom of the concern, if little at the top. Most men, when they tell how they were educated, stop with graduation. When I became a Bachelor of Arts I probably supposed that I was educated; but I soon learned my mistake. I began to teach, chiefly languages; and though I got credit with a good many people for knowing three or more well, I was not satisfied. My acquirements in Greek and Latin were particularly unsatisfactory. Nevertheless, with the direction I had received, I did not know how to better my case. |