Page:Discipline and the Derelict (1921).pdf/193

 "Oh, Jim," was his reply, "Jim's an awfully good fellow; he's charming; no one could say anything cross to Jim. He's an artist; he's a poet; he's a dreamer; he could do anything if he would."

He was correct in his diagnosis; I simply phrased it a little differently; Jim was the most delightfully artistic loafer in college. He was the sort of fellow of whom people were always saying that he would be a great man if he ever got down to work; but he never did, and he's the most commonplace citizen to-day of the country town in which he lives.

Some people argue that college is a good place for the loafer even if he will not do his college work with credit. He learns to know people, he picks up a smattering of useful information through his daily rubbing up against those who do study, and whether he puts forth much effort of his own or not he comes constantly into contact with people of culture and experience and refinement. He is of no great harm to the college, they say, and the college may be of untold benefit to him. Perhaps so.

I remember a number of years ago we had in the University—I had him in fact in some of my own classes—a big lazy loafer who so far as any of his instructors could discover never "cracked" a book. He had one virtue; he never cut a recitation even though he never recited, and he was also an impenetrable wall in football. One day the president of the institution, who at that time had general charge of all delinquents whether in scholarship or in other things, was looking over Mr. Hicks' scholastic record, which was no credit to any one.