ot be expected of them. You do worship
false gods. I find hope in the fact that you recognize the stuff of
which your gods are made. I have great hopes for the American colleges,
not because I have any reason to believe that the faculties will become
wiser or that the administrations will lead the students to true gods;
not at all, but I do think that the students themselves will find a way.
They have already abandoned Mammon; at least, the most intelligent have,
and I begin to see signs of less adoration for athletics. Athletics, of
course, have their place, and some of the students are beginning to find
that place. Certainly the alumni haven't, and I don't believe that the
administrative officers have, either. Just so long as athletes advertise
the college, the administrations will coddle them. The undergraduates,
however, show signs of frowning on professionalism, and the stupid
athlete is rapidly losing his prestige. An athlete has to show something
more than brawn to be a hero among his fellows nowadays."

He paused, and Pudge spoke up. "Perhaps you are right," he said, "but I
doubt it. Athletics are certainly far more important to us than anything
else, and the captain of the football team is always the biggest man in
college. But I don't care particularly about that. What I want to know
is how the colleges justify their existence. I don't see that you have
proved that they do."

"No, I haven't," Henley admitted, "and I don't know that I can prove it.
Of course, the colleges aren't perfect, not by a long way, but as human
institutions go, I think they justify their existence. The four years
spent at college by an intelligent boy--please notice that I say
intelligent--are well spent indeed. They are gloriously worth while. You
said that you have had a wonderful time. Not so wonderful as you think.
It is a strange feeling that we have about our college years. We all
believe that they are years of unalloyed happiness, and the further we
leave them behind the more perfect they seem. As a matter of fact, few
undergraduates are truly happy. They are going through a period of storm
and stress; they are torn by _Weltschmerz_. Show me a nineteen-year-old
boy who is perfectly happy and you show me an idiot. I rarely get a
cheerful theme except from freshmen. Nine tenths of them are expressions
of deep concern and distress. A boy's college years are the years when
he finds out that life isn't what he thought it, and the find