into useful citizens--capable,
earnest and excellent. I know a little about Swarthmore, Wellesley,
Vassar, Radcliffe, and have put my head into West Point and Annapolis,
and had nobody cry, "Genius!"

Of Harvard, Yale and Princeton I know something, having done time in
each. I have also given jobs to graduates of Oxford, Cambridge and
Heidelberg, to my sorrow and their chagrin. This does not prove that
graduates of the great universities are, as a rule, out of work, or that
they are incompetent. It simply means that it is possible for a man to
graduate at these institutions and secure his diploma and yet be a man
who has nothing the world really wants, either in way of ideas or
services.

The reason that my "cum laude" friends did not like me, and the cause of
my having to part with them--getting them a little free transportation
from your Uncle George--was not because they lacked intelligence, but
because they wanted to secure a position, while I simply offered them a
job.

They were like Cave-of-the-Winds of Oshkosh, who is an ice-cutter in
August, and in winter is an out-of-door horticulturist--a hired man is
something else.

As a general proposition, I believe this will not now be disputed: the
object of education is that a man may benefit himself by serving
society.

To benefit others, you must be reasonably happy: there must be animation
through useful activity, good-cheer, kindness and health--health of mind
and health of body. And to benefit society you must also have patience,
persistency, and a firm determination to do the right thing, and to mind
your own business so that others, too, may mind theirs. Then all should
be tinctured with a dash of discontent with past achievements, so you
will constantly put forth an effort to do more and better work.

When what you have done in the past looks large to you, you haven't done
much today.

So there you get the formula of Education: health and happiness through
useful activity--animation, kindness, good-cheer, patience, persistency,
willingness to give and take, seasoned with enough discontent to prevent
smugness, which is the scum that grows over every stagnant pond.

Of course no college can fill this prescription--no institution can
supply the ingredients--all that the college can do is to supply the
conditions so that these things can spring into being. Plants need the
sunlight--mushrooms are different.

The question is, then, what teaching concern i