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by way of punishment, and Hogboom made Perkins write it in two nights by threats of making a clean breast. Poor Hoggy came out of it pretty badly. I think it broke both of his engagements, and what between explaining to the Faculty and studying to make a good showing and redeem himself, he didn't have time to work up another before Commencement--while the rest of us lived in mortal terror of exposure and didn't enjoy ourselves a bit all through May, though it was some comfort to reflect on what would have happened if the scheme had worked--for Hambletonian beat us to a frazzle that afternoon. That's what we got for monkeying with a solemn subject. But, pshaw! Who cares in college? What a student can do is limited only by what he can think up. Did I ever tell you what we did to the English Explorer? Take another cigar. It isn't late yet. CHAPTER V COLLEGES WHILE YOU WAIT Mind you, old head, I'm not saying that a little education isn't a good thing in a college course. I learned a lot of real knowledge in school myself that I wouldn't have missed for anything, though I have forgotten it now. But what irritate me are the people who think that the education you get in a modern American super-heated, cross-compound college comes to you already canned in neat little textbooks sold by the trust at one hundred per cent profit, and that all you have to do is to go to your room with them, fill up a student lamp with essence of General Education and take the lid off. Honest, lots of them think that. It might have been so, too, in the good old days when there was only one college graduate for each town and he had to do the heavy thinking for the whole community. But, pshaw! the easiest job in the world nowadays is to stuff your storage battery full of Greek verbs and obituaries in English literature, and the hardest job is to get it hitched up to something that will bring in the yellowbacks, the chopped-wood furniture, the automobile tires and the large majorities in the fall elections. I've seen brilliant boys at old Siwash go out of college knowing everything that had ever happened in the world up to one hundred years ago, and try to peddle hexameters in the wholesale district in Chicago. And I've seen boys who slid through the course just half a hair's breadth ahead of the Faculty boot, go out and do the bossing for a whole Congressional district in five years. They hadn't learned the exact chemical formula of
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