The St. Louis Republic. [volume] (St. Louis, Mo.) 1888-1919, 1904-11-20

arm him that will render him more than commonly
effective on the firing-line of life? Your bed and
board don't count, for they would have their equals
in what feasts and feather-beds he left behind at
home. Your athletics don't count. for every health
result they offer would find as prompt attainment
were the boy involved with a pillow or a pile of cord
wood for spaces even with those spent in the gym
nasium. The benefit. if it exists. must lurk in what
is given his intellect. And so | ask again: In ex-
change for that one-eleventh of his whole remaining
capital of years. what does the boy take?"
You will not deny, " observed the educator acri-
moniously, that the student gets a finished education?"
1T might be complained, - returned the barbarous
one, that YOU too much limit the term education
in its definition. A man might know how to look
for and discover a gold mine. and then open and work
and market his vein of saffron wealth. If that was
ali, you'd call him ignorant. Wanting that gold
knowledge. were he still to reed Homer in the original
Greek, you would allow his claim to education. One
might be wise enough and of such def, ingenious
hand as to build and sail a ship around the globe.
If that was to be the measure of his requirement
you would write him ignorant. On the other hand,
missing those boat abilities, were he capable of sky
high mathematics, and able to translate Cesar and
Sallust and Vergil as he ran, you would coin and circu-
late him as one of education. To put it bluntly.
and remembering the so-callcd classical courses of
your school, of what use is Latin or Greek to one
who, on lines of law or medicine or commerce or
engineering or literature or trades which grapple more
with the physical, must bring down his daily bread.
Greek and Latin!" gasped the educator. and he
looked the horror a priest of Ind would feel at despite
done his idols. "Of what use is it to teach Latin
and Creek"
mo teach; study. L can, when l remember
your college, worth twenty millions as mere property.
discern a profit from their teaching. But why should
one study them?"
why, even in your own business of writing,
cried the educator. their study is of immense i'm
portance. To know Latin and Greek is in most
instances to know the derivation of words-of the
actual English words you usei"
And why should that be important Laying
aside the fact that both Latin and Greek, when all
is said; are only halfway houses on the trail of tongues.
| must still point out that the derivation of a word
is of no more moment to him who writes than is the
derivation of a potato to him who eats. Why should
the ~banqueter burn with mad concern as to whether
Colorado or Bermuda gave some particular potato
birth? 1t has eliminated, with him. as potato, and
the interest of our Lucullus pushes no farther afeld.
And so of words. Their ancestry is only of imaginary
Importance; surely it isn't worth oneeleventh of
ones life. The exploration of ones own ancestry,
the discovery of ones own derivation, wouldn't be
worth .one year of life. And is one to give FIVE
years to locate the proftess head waters of a word,'
There is a maxim of the law: when the reason
ceases, the law ceases" CcSSdt rdtiones, oessdt Lr). The
colleges would seem to know nothing of this aphorism.
They continue to chart their course of study by the
dusty, musty. university examples of two hundred
years ago. Do they know why, say in the years of
Queen Anne. the colleges adhered so slavishly to Latin
and Greek? 1t was because almost the worlds whole
literature was buried in those languages.
In, for example. the year 1904, what was there OF
literature extant in English? OF the dramatists.
Shakespeare. Jonson and a score of others. OF the
poets, Chaucer with his Tales. Spenser with his
"Gaer1e Queene, Sidney with his Sweetened mush of
." Pembroke's Arcadia. There were Waller. Suck
ling, Lovelace and a dozen others of the 1ovesick ones.
There were the political poets, such as DRYDEN and
Butler; and the heavy fellows like Milton. OF prose
there lived little; besides being for a most part of
that fantastical school to which the antithetical
coxcomb Lyly, with his "Euphoes, belonged. Indeed.
one might have read the whole English printed litera-
of England during the nights of one winter. The
made a reason for Latin and Greek: a reason
which has vanished in an English hour. owning whole
libraries of hterature-better and nobler than anv
penned of Rome or Athens-born since that time
When | have asked one who believed in a college
value the reason for the hope within him. it more
than once was suggested how a boy in college makes
acquaintance that will be of use to him in later life.
Without pausing to notice those sundry acquaintance