Page:In the dozy hours, and other papers.djvu/143

 Rh we travel at this rate of speed. "What under the sun is bringing all the women after Hegel?" asked a puzzled librarian not very long ago. "There isn't one of his books left in the library, and twenty women come in a day to ask for him." It was explained to this custodian that a popular lecturer had been dwelling with some enthusiasm upon Hegel, and that the sudden demand for the philosopher was a result of his contagious eloquence. It seemed for the nonce like a revival of pantheism; but in two weeks every volume was back in its place, and the gray dust of neglect was settling down as of yore upon each hoary head. The women, fickle as in the days of the troubadours, had wandered far from German erudition, and were by that time wrestling with the Elizabethan poets, or the constitutional history of republics. The sun of philosophy had set.

One rather dismal result of this rapid transit is the amount of material which each lecture is required to hold, and which each lecture-goer is expected to remember. A few centuries of Egyptian history or of Mediæval song are packed down by some system of