The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-09-12

up in few days now, l guess"
 \ said the House Detective of the St. Reckless.
 "They will" said the Hotel Clerk. Were you thinking of entering one your self?"
 q wus not" said the House Detective with dignity.
 Well, I didn't know" said the Hotel Clerk ''To be sure you're little bit heavy for track work and a little bit light for football. Still, there's no fool like an old fool. the poet says, and thought maybe you might be figuring on B postgraduate course in cane-rushing to fit you the better for getting aboard the subway train going home nights"
 No matter wot you may say an eddy cations a great thing" said the House Detective stoutly.
 Tt is that, for those who are qualified to endure it." said the Hotel Clerk. This college proposition is something like lager beer Larry. little bit won't hurt any body, hardly; there are some so consti- tuted that they can take a good deal into the system without it's going to their head. but too large an amount of it will unfit anyone for the society of man or beast A mug of education drawn from
 
 but once a lad gets the thirst and starts to rushing the intellectual growler to the side door of the university family liquor store he's gone. Eventually you have on your hands a confirmed sot who's only fit to sit around the house, full of stale knowledge with the bead all gone from it, and let his relatives support him. He's loaded with things that don't do him or anyone else any good. I'd hate to know more than anybody else in the world anyhow. What would be the satisfaction of winning an argument from your friend if you had him beaten on the facts to start with? It's where you enter with a long handicap of ignorance and strong equipment of wind power and en- durance that you really get a little pleas ure out of pouring loud, but misleading arguments into him until he goes be- low and battens down the hatehes to get out of the gale
 "A college diploma isn't everything, Larry The best a college can give you Is a bunch of initials to trail after your name but at an outlay of S15 and clean suit of underclothes for the initiation rites you can become a supreme exalted potentate of the Concentrated Order Of Iaryngitis and if you stay in it awhile you'll be elected to an office and get title that's really worth while. father may spend several thousand dollars put
  back the finished product in the shape of a young hubbard squash who wears his handkerchiefs up his cuff and has enough intelligence to color meerschaum pipe, but not enough to mix a salad dress ing. On the other hand how few Of our successful pugilists ever saw the inside of A college? Only one and he was one of those large triple extract iavors when he got into the ring. l refer to MT. Riddle of Philadelphia.
 .'There's plenty of college boys get to be purfessional baseball players assert ed the House Detective.
 'gThere are, indeed" assented the Ho- tel Clerk plenty of them but who do we find heading the batting column when the Ides of October come and the hides of the losers hang on the grand stand fence? Who l ask you? Collegians? Well not to any overpowering extent. Iris A husky gent who learned how to swing the bat while larruping mules with the free hand, spencerian stroke in a Pennsylvania coal mine and answering to the name of Wagner, Hans. Or a lad called Collins who couldn't average above 900 with Murray's Grammar in the box but who's the Abou Bend Kid on Page l of the Official Scorers neat little work of reference.
 Mind you, Larry, I'm not down on the college. Some of the best walters that ever waited on me were college bred men. Rut this higher education has much the same effect upon the young that scarlet fever does If they survive they are either the stronger for having had it. or else the mind is permanently weakened, and the props show an inclination to- ward ricl1ets. And besides this is the seneration, when pale mauve-t tinted in- feliect IS being jaunmed through the hack drop by the lad with the plum -colored wa1lop.
 'aWhat of the pallid young poet who knows everything that Owen Meredith and Keats ever wrote off by heart and has a forehead so high that you'd think he was wearing a rat in it? I'll tell you what of him. He lives in a hall bed room gnawing his nails and cheese sand wiches and about once every six months he sells a perfect gem of quartrain for as much as seven dollars, payable or publfcat ation, which will be in 1912 But how about the lad who writes the popu- lar song relating to 'rhe Valley In vir- gtnia Where the Moonshine Is So Stilly?' if you'd ask him if he was acquainted with the worlU of Shelley he'd tell you, with a plying look. that he has no time to keep up with the percentages of \ the players in those little outlaw leagues out west He doesn't know whether Wadsworth was the author of a ready reckoner or patent medicine and he always gets Charlotte Bronte and Lydia Pinkham mixed in his mind. It seems to him that guy named Omar Khayam wrote some verses once, or was it Hun yadi Janosf
 "But when ft comes 10 making me rhyme with thee and love with dove and