The St. Louis Republic. [volume] (St. Louis, Mo.) 1888-1919, 1904-11-20
The Side of the C0mm0mer

I'm the same day that l was III In
asked to write this article, y al
being in chance-sown con-
versation with the manager of a
great street railway, that mag n
nate of traction said:
IF was to advertise in the
New-York papers for college
graduates to enlist with my COM
pany as motor men and conduc-
tors | should have two hundred
applications, each accompanied by
a university sheepskin, within
twcntv-four hours. | could man
my entire road with Masters of
Arts"
Also, not two days before, l
had been told by a leading pub
Usher OF a university man who
was tossing f1apyacks for a live =
lihood in the front window of \
a Broadway restaurant, and had
consulted him as to best meth
DDS of bursting into literature.
This question of a college edu-
cation and its value is not new.
Montague discussed it three and
one half centuries ago, and speak
ing of Latin and Greek and their
requirement, observed:
Half our age is cmbeZzled in
this way. We are kept -four and
five years to learn words only,
and to tack them together into
phrases.
Our own Franklin, two centuries later
F%renchman. did not speak enthusiastically of
and, referring to the so-called classical cot
marked that he did not think well OF Learnt
and Greek, inasrnuch as he did not believe i
the ignorance OF the ancients to :he natural j
with which we were born.
John Quincy Adams wrote ~gloomily in hi
"Seminaries OF learning have been sycoph
time-servcrS in every age
However. this was hot on the heels OF a co
by Harvard College-or was it Yale.-of tn
of Doctor of Laws on Andrew Jackson, whor
loathcd. This may account for the pc,
of our Bay State diarist.
What has gone before will have no present
ton only as far as the reader makes one for h
What do you know" said the man W
prodding me to this performance. what do V
of college men and other mem"
"Of other men, >" | replied, Il know a de
one of them. OF college men, the thing
most emphasized itself upon my memory is t
are forever asking me questions" This last is
half-truc.
Last week l received a letter from a
oiho, "h' PN' SUNNY beS'NfOh' ""' '"A
had spent four years taking the classical cot
university, and three more taking the law co,
was now playing baseball to live.
More: About a dinner-table in Delmonico
were four of us. Having occasion to quote I
where. speaking of Thoreau, he said: ~
Henry, but we don't like him" a YOU
on my right-a graduate of Yale, and cv
hoarse from much loyalty of screaming over
victory at ball-aSked:
Who was Thorcaul"
Not being a college man, l am or ought
bad nudge Of those who are. Besides, in tn,
ing instance of the youth from Yale, | may
apprehended in its fullness the questioning bt
underlay his chip of motive. Possibly, 10y;
was to Yale, he pretended ignorance of the
of Walden, who was a long-ago offshoot of
Or it may have been that he had not read
for fun, and was going about my own in:
by the Socratic method of asking questions
| now see that his curiosity could have bee
lated to mean no more than an effort on his
release me from those knots into which a
ignorance had tied my existence. However.
90: / didn't answer the Yale youths query, but