, I should think, can
the President know enough of medicine and education to control those
departments."

"No more does he," was the reply. "Except in the general way that he is
responsible for the enforcement of the laws as to all classes, the
President has nothing to do with the faculties of medicine and
education, which are controlled by boards of regents of their own, in
which the President is ex-officio chairman, and has the casting vote.
These regents, who, of course, are responsible to Congress, are chosen
by the honorary members of the guilds of education and medicine, the
retired teachers and doctors of the country."

"Do you know," I said, "the method of electing officials by votes of
the retired members of the guilds is nothing more than the application
on a national scale of the plan of government by alumni, which we used
to a slight extent occasionally in the management of our higher
educational institutions."

"Did you, indeed?" exclaimed Dr. Leete, with animation. "That is quite
new to me, and I fancy will be to most of us, and of much interest as
well. There has been great discussion as to the germ of the idea, and
we fancied that there was for once something new under the sun. Well!
well! In your higher educational institutions! that is interesting
indeed. You must tell me more of that."

"Truly, there is very little more to tell than I have told already," I
replied. "If we had the germ of your idea, it was but as a germ."

Chapter 18

That evening I sat up for some time after the ladies had retired,
talking with Dr. Leete about the effect of the plan of exempting men
from further service to the nation after the age of forty-five, a point
brought up by his account of the part taken by the retired citizens in
the government.

"At forty-five," said I, "a man still has ten years of good manual
labor in him, and twice ten years of good intellectual service. To be
superannuated at that age and laid on the shelf must be regarded rather
as a hardship than a favor by men of energetic dispositions."

"My dear Mr. West," exclaimed Dr. Leete, beaming upon me, "you cannot
have any idea of the piquancy your nineteenth century ideas have for us
of this day, the rare quaintness of their effect. Know, O child of
another race and yet the same, that the labor we have to render as our
part in securing for the nation the means of a comfortable physical
existence is by no means regarded as the most important,