The Plastic Age · Chapter 24 (2/2)

Winsor could not sit still and talk. He filled his pipe viciously, lighted it, and then jumped up and leaned against the mantel. “I admit everything that’s been said, but I don’t believe that it is altogether our fault.” He was intensely in earnest, and so were his listeners. “Look at the faculty. When I came here I thought that they were all wise men because they were on the faculty. Well, I’ve found out otherwise. Some of them know a lot and can’t teach, a few of them know a lot and can teach, some of them know a little and can’t teach, and some of them don’t know anything and can’t explain c-a-t. Why, look at Kempton. That freshman, Larson, showed me a theme the other day that Kempton had corrected. It was full of errors that weren’t marked, and it was nothing in the world but drip. Even Larson knew that, but he’s the foxy kid; he wrote the theme about Kempton. All right⁠—Kempton gives him a B and tells him that it is very amusing. Hell of a lot Larson’s learning. Look at Kane in math. I had him when I was a freshman.”

“Me, too,” Hugh chimed in.

“ ’Nough said, then. Math’s dry enough, God knows, but Kane makes it dryer. He’s a born desiccator. He could make Hamlet as dry as calculus.”

“Right-o,” said Pudge. “But Mitchell could make calculus as exciting as Hamlet. It’s fifty-fifty.”

“And they fired Mitchell.” Jack Lawrence spoke for the first time. “I have that straight. The administration seems afraid of a man that can teach. They’ve made Buchanan a full professor, and there isn’t a man in college who can tell what he’s talking about. He’s written a couple of books that nobody reads, and that makes him a scholar. I was forced to take three courses with him. They were agony, and he never taught me a damn thing.”

“Most of them don’t teach you a damn thing,” Winsor exclaimed, tapping his pipe on the mantel. “They either tell you something that you can find more easily in a book, or just confuse you with a lot of ponderous lectures that put you to sleep or drive you crazy if you try to understand them.”

“There are just about a dozen men in this college worth listening to,” Hugh put in, “and I’ve got three of them this term. I’m learning more than I did in my whole three first years. Let’s be fair, though. We’re blaming it all on the profs, and you know damn well that we don’t study. All we try to do is to get by⁠—I don’t mean you Phi Betes; I mean all the rest of us⁠—and if we can put anything over on the profs we are tickled pink. We’re like a lot of little kids in grammar-school. Just look at the cheating that goes on, the copying of themes, and the cribbing. It’s rotten!”

Winsor started to protest, but Hugh rushed on. “Oh, I know that the majority of the fellows don’t consciously cheat; I’m talking about the copying of math problems and the using of trots and the paraphrasing of Literary Digest articles for themes and all that sort of thing. If more than half 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.”