The Plastic Age Percy Marks (read full novel txt) 📖

that I can stand⁠—and you have passed the limit. There is hardly a man in this class who hasn’t written at least one theme on the glory that is Sanford. As you know, I am a Sanford man myself, and I have my share of affection for the college, but you have reached an ecstasy of chauvinism that makes Chauvin’s affection for Napoleon seem almost like contempt.

“In the last batch of themes I got five telling me of the perfection of Sanford: Sanford is the greatest college in the country; Sanford has the best athletes, the finest equipment, the most erudite faculty, the most perfect location, the most loyal alumni, the strongest spirit⁠—the most superlative everything. Nonsense! Rot! Bunk! Sanford hasn’t anything of the sort, and I who love it say so. Sanford is a good little college, but it isn’t a Harvard, a Yale, or a Princeton, or, for that matter, a Dartmouth or Brown; and those colleges still have perfection ahead of them. Sanford has made a place for itself in the sun, but it will never find a bigger place so long as its sons do nothing but chant its praises and condemn anyone as disloyal who happens to mention its very numerous faults.

“Well, I’m going to mention some of those faults, not all of them by any means, just those that any intelligent undergraduate ought to be able to see for himself.

“In the first place, this is supposed to be an educational institution; it is endowed for that purpose and it advertises itself as such. And you men say that you come here to get an education. But what do you really do? You resist education with all your might and main, digging your heels into the gravel of your own ignorance and fighting any attempt to teach you anything every inch of the way. What’s worse, you aren’t content with your own ignorance; you insist that everyone else be ignorant, too. Suppose a man attempts to acquire culture, as some of them do. What happens? He is branded as wet. He is a social leper.

“Wet! What currency that bit of slang has⁠—and what awful power. It took me a long time to find out what the word meant, but after long research I think that I know. A man is wet if he isn’t a ‘regular guy’; he is wet if he isn’t ‘smooth’; he is wet if he has intellectual interests and lets the mob discover them; and, strangely enough, he is wet by the same token if he is utterly stupid. He is wet if he doesn’t show at least a tendency to dissipate, but he isn’t wet if he dissipates to excess. A man will be branded as wet for any of these reasons, and once he is so branded, he might as well leave college; if he doesn’t, he will have a lonely and hard row to hoe. It is a rare undergraduate who can stand the open contempt of his fellows.”

He paused, obviously ordering his thoughts before continuing. The boys waited expectantly. Some of them were angry, some amused, a few in agreement, and all of them intensely interested.

Henley leaned back in his chair. “What horrible little conformers you are,” he began sarcastically, “and how you loathe anyone who doesn’t conform! You dress both your bodies and your minds to some set model. Just at present you are making your hair foul with some sort of perfumed axle-grease; nine tenths of you part it in the middle. It makes no difference whether the style is becoming to you or not; you slick it down and part it in the middle. Last year nobody did it; the chances are that next year nobody will do it, but anybody who doesn’t do it right now is in danger of being called wet.”

Hugh had a moment of satisfaction. He did not pomade his hair, and he parted it on the side as he had when he came to college. True, he had tried the new fashion, but after scanning himself carefully in the mirror, he decided that he looked like a “blond wop”⁠—and washed his hair. He was guilty, however, of the next crime mentioned.

“The same thing is true of clothes,” Henley was saying. “Last year everyone wore four-button suits and very severe trousers. This year everyone is wearing Norfolk jackets and bell-bottomed trousers, absurd things that flop around the shoes, and some of them all but trail on the ground. Now, anyone who can’t afford the latest creation or who declines to wear it is promptly called wet.

“And, as I said before, you insist on the same standardization of your minds. Just now it is not au fait to like poetry; a man who does is exceedingly wet, indeed; he is effeminate, a sissy. As a matter of fact, most of you like poetry very much. You never give me such good attention as when I read poetry. What’s more, some of you are writing the disgraceful stuff. But what happens when a man does submit a poem as a theme? He writes at the bottom of the page, ‘Please do not read this in class.’ Some of you write that because you don’t think that the poem is very good, but most of you are afraid of the contempt of your classmates. I know of any number of men in this college who read vast quantities of poetry, but always on the sly. Just think of that! Men pay thousands of dollars and give four years of their lives supposedly to acquire culture and then have to sneak off into a corner to read poetry.

“Who are your college gods? The brilliant men who are thinking and learning, the men with ideals and aspirations? Not by a long shot. They are the athletes. Some of the athletes happen to be as intelligent and as eager to learn as anybody else, but a fair number are here simply because they are paid to