The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-07-12

lnstFuctiOu II osscriDcA w HafS ucNh Va -
cordial, friendly, courteous and humane
kind; the life was one of purely literary
ambition, of natural friendship, for there
was no distinction of persons; no affected
pride: money did not distinguish, nor
family: only brains. The Harvard gradu-
ates from 1880 to 1s45 include the greatest
names on her shining roll; some of them
are still with rs, for despite the absence Of
systematic athletics, the graduates of
those days have proved of remarkable long,
evity. While the simplicity of college life
disappeared generation later, neverthe-
less from 1861 to 1865 the superlative title
to distinction had not become family,
much less wealth vulgarly displayed, but
good breeding that marks man who to
geniality and nobility of character adds
knowledge of the world. There was some
riot and animal excess, but men boast
ing Of such conduct were not in
fuential and were not admitted to
the Perennial or the Pudding Club. In
speech at least the leaders of col
lege life were clean: they never talked
wantonly before young boys, and never
forgot perfect modesty of language before
young women. The best set at Harvard
from 1S6i-65 were gentlemen in spirit and
feeling, and if this cannot be said as truth
fully today. it is due chiefly to the morbid
perversion of athletics and the increasing
number OF vulgar rich mems sons, who
seem to have become numerous enough to
erect vulgar standard and secure con-
siderable number of demoralized and de-
moralizing followers.
On the whole, it may be said that college
education is not desirable for people whose
main purpose in life is to make money.
The boy whose ove-powering ambition is
to make money cannot reasonably expect
to find in college life and training any
help to that end. 1t is doubtful even
whether college training is as good, logi-
cal preparation for journalist as life
which begins at the printers case in a
newspaper Office would be from IL to II.
Greeley thought very lightly of college
men in journalism, and so did Sam
Bowles. Neither of these men thought
lightly of learning or knowledge of
any sort, but they believed the social
life of college bred Incidence, that its in
telIectual life ran in lines of clannish cul-
ture that handicapped the graduate of the
college in journalism as compared with
the graduate of the lease" and the news
paper Office. 1t is questionable whether
college training does not handicap rather
than help a man of natural genius for
literature and even law, for habits of
study in law Office are more
severe with less tendency to social
distraction and well-bred Incidence than
those of college, whose very gregarious-
ness tends to discourage intense and contln-
uous application to study. The quality of
spontaneity in men of talent gets a chill
through college culture that it escapes in
the wide, rude world. The lonely lamp of
the man who loves learning and knowl-
edge for its own sake and wins it without
college has given poetry and fiction,
and we believe science, more able votaries
than has the college.
OF course the men of talent without the
college who win their way do not do it
without severe study; they win because
they do study and toll more terribly than
the man of talent does within the college,
because he is subjected to distractions,
,temptations-to intellectual dissipation
and dreaming through his social sur
roundings that the lonely, self
taught man does not feel. Howells
and Thomas Bailey Aldrich both
began at the printers case. Aldrich has
everything in his mastery of poetic
expression and versatile literary power
that college could have given him, and
has kept what the college would probably
have condemned and emasculated, viz:
his spontaneity. For people of leisure
and money, college education is in the
nature of a desirable luxury, but
men who have inherited brains,
energy and thirst for learning and
literary fame but no money cannot afford
college, do not need one if they could
afford it, and are better off without it, for
they keep their spontaneity, which the
clannish culture and life of colleges always
chills, ever fresh and fair and new: that
spontaneity which Shakespeare possessed
over Milton, Burns over Gray, Bright and
| Golden over Gladstone, and Abraham
| Lincoln over Edward Everett.