ill
nod acquiescence with a mental reservation of "but," significant of "Who
are you? What can you do, or what have you done?" It is your current
life's answer to these interrogatives that most interest people in this
material world in your behalf. Only as we increase in commercial
pursuits, ownership of property, and the higher elements of production
through skilled labor will our political barometer rise. Upon these we
should anchor our hopes, assured that higher education, with its
"classic graces, will follow in their proper places."

Of the latter a humorous writer, in answer to the question from the
president of an Eastern college, "Is there any good reason why our sons
should not study the dead languages?" said: "While our sons are not on
speaking terms with many live languages, it ill becomes them to go
fooling around the dead and dying. I do not think it necessary that our
sons should study these defunct tongues. A language that did not have
strength enough to pull through and crawled off somewhere and died,
doesn't seem worth studying. I will go further, and say I do not see why
our sons should spend valuable time over invalid languages that aren't
feeling very well. Let us not, professor, either one of us, send our
sons into the hospital to lug out languages on a stretcher just to study
them. No; let us bring up our sons to shun all diseased and disabled
languages, even if it can't be proved that a language comes under either
of those heads; if it has been missing since the last engagement, it is
just as well not to have our sons chasing around after it with a
detective, trying to catch and pore over it. You may look at it
differently, professor. Our paths in the great realm of education of
youth may lie far apart; but it is my heartfelt wish that I may never
live to see a son of mine ride right past healthy athletic languages and
then stand up in the stirrups and begin to whoop and try to lariat some
poor old language going around on a crutch, carrying half of its
alphabet in a sling. If two-thirds of the words of a language are flat
on their back, taking quinine, trying to get up an appetite, let us
teach our sons that they cannot hope to derive benefit from its study."

But Lord Rosebery, ex-Premier of England, in a late address before the
University of Glasgow on "Questions of Empire," in the following, on
action and learning, takes a serious view:

"There was a time, long years ago, when the spher