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

of the fellows don’t do that sort of thing some time or other in college, I’ll eat my hat. And we all know darned well that we aren’t supposed to do it, but the majority of fellows cheat in some way or other before they graduate!

“We aren’t so much. Do you remember, George, what Jimmie Henley said to us when we were sophomores in English Thirty-six? He laid us out cold, said that we were as standardized as Fords and that we were ashamed of anything intellectual. Well, he was right. Do you remember how he ended by saying that if we were the cream of the earth, he felt sorry for the skimmed milk⁠—or something like that?”

“Sure, I remember,” Winsor replied, running his fingers through his rusty hair. “He certainly pulled a heavy line that day. He was right, too.”

“I’ll tell you what,” exclaimed Pudge suddenly, so suddenly that his crossed legs parted company and his foot fell heavily to the floor. “Let’s put it up to Henley in class tomorrow. Let’s ask him straight out if he thinks college is worth while.”

“He’ll hedge,” objected Lawrence. “All the profs do if you ask them anything like that.” Winsor laughed. “You don’t know Jimmie Henley. He won’t hedge. You’ve never had a class with him, but Hugh and Pudge and I are all in English Fifty-three, and we’ll put it up to him. He’ll tell us what he thinks all right, and I hope to God that he says it is worth while. I’d like to have somebody convince me that I’ve got something out of these four years beside lower ideals. Hell, sometimes I think that we’re all damn fools. We worship athletics⁠—no offense, Hugh⁠—above everything else; we gamble and drink and talk like bums; and about every so often some fellow has to go home because a lovely lady has left him with bitter, bitter memories. I’m with Henley. If we’re the cream of the earth⁠—well, thank the Lord, we’re not.”

“Who is,” Lawrence asked earnestly.

“God knows.”

XXV

English 53 had only a dozen men in it; so Henley conducted the course in a very informal fashion. The men felt free to bring up for discussion any topic that interested them.

Nobody was surprised, therefore, when George Winsor asked Henley to express his opinion of the value of a college education. He reminded Henley of what he had said two years before, and rapidly gave a resumé of the discussion that resulted in the question he was asking. “We’d like to know, too,” he concluded, grinning wickedly, “just whom you consider the cream of the earth. You remember you said that if we were you felt sorry for the skimmed milk.”

Henley leaned back in his chair and laughed. “Yes,” he said, “I remember saying that. I didn’t think, though, that you would remember it for two years. You seem to remember most of what I said. I am truly astonished.” He grinned back at Winsor. “The swine seem to have eaten the pearls.”

The class laughed, but Winsor was not one to refuse the gambit. “They were very indigestible,” he said quickly.

“Good!” Henley exclaimed. “I wanted them to give you a bellyache, and I am delighted that you still suffer.”

“We do,” Pudge Jamieson admitted, “but we’d like to have a little mercy shown to us now. We’ve spent four years here, and while we’ve enjoyed them, we’ve just about made up our minds that they have been all in all wasted years.”

“No.” Henley was decisive. His playful manner entirely disappeared. “No, not wasted. You have enjoyed them, you say. Splendid justification. You will continue to enjoy them as the years grow between you and your college days. All men are sentimental about college, and in that sentimentality there is continuous pleasure.”

“Your doubt delights me. Your feeling that you haven’t learned anything delights me, too. It proves that you have learned a great deal. It is only the ignoramus who thinks he is wise; the wise man knows that he is an ignoramus. That’s a platitude, but it is none the less true. I have cold comfort for you: the more you learn, the less confident you will be of your own learning, the more utterly ignorant you will feel. I have never known so much as, the day I graduated from high school. I held my diploma and the knowledge of the ages in my hand. I had never heard of Socrates, but I would have challenged him to a debate without the slightest fear.”

“Since then I have grown more humble, so humble that there are times when I am ashamed to come into the classroom. What right have I to teach anybody anything? I mean that quite sincerely. Then I remember that, ignorant as I am, the undergraduates are more ignorant. I take heart and mount the rostrum ready to speak with the authority of a pundit.”

He realized that he was sliding off on a tangent and paused to find a new attack. Pudge Jamieson helped him.

“I suppose that’s all true,” he said, “but it doesn’t explain why college is really worth while. The fact remains that most of us don’t learn anything, that we are coarsened by college, and that we⁠—well, we worship false gods.”

Henley nodded in agreement. “It would be hard to deny your assertions,” he acknowledged, “and I don’t think that I am going to try to deny them. Of course, men grow coarser while they are in college, but that doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t grow coarser if they weren’t in college. It isn’t college that coarsens a man and destroys his illusions; it is life. Don’t think that you can grow to manhood and retain your pretty dreams. You have become disillusioned about college. In the next few years you will suffer further disillusionment. That is the price of living.”

“Every intelligent man with ideals eventually becomes a cynic. It is inevitable. He has standards, and, granted that he is intelligent, he