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