Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/545

Rh that routine work has made impossible during the year—for the renewal of his intellectual storage batteries for another year. More likely than not, he does less reading and writing than he desires because he knows that his physical and nervous batteries also need re-storing.

The physical and nervous expenditure of the college professor's life is not usually appreciated. Talk is cheap, we are told, with the implication that it is easy, and there is no denying that to some kinds of people some kinds of talk are both cheap and easy; but the sustained talk of a fifty-minute lecture, or the almost sustained talk of a recitation period, especially if the lecturer or teacher is warmed with enthusiasm, is not a task to be repeated many times on the same day without a manner of exhaustion far different from mere bodily fatigue, and more lasting. It should surprise no one that men and women who spend five days of the week in work of such intensity, and two more in work that differs only in degree, feel at the year's end the need of a prolonged period for recuperation.

The college professor does not measure his time—which means that he also does not begrudge it. And the reason why he does not is that in the main his pleasure coincides with his duty. He gives his time ungrudgingly because he likes to. I do not forget the fine bits of humor about the professor—"a man with not enough brains to be a clerk, and too little muscle to dig ditches." As a matter of fact, he is a college professor because he is fitted for and enjoys the intellectual life, and because he has followed his bent. Almost, if not quite as much as the clergyman, he has been "called." He has not selected his vocation; his vocation has selected him. And almost, if not quite as much, with him as with the clergyman, salary is but an accident of vocation.

The college professor's liking for his work, together with his comparative liberty, is no doubt responsible for the impression that he has an easy time. In one way, the impression is well grounded. He does enjoy a degree of liberty, for his vacations are long and his work elastic. Time does pass rapidly and easily, because he is for a great part of it absorbed in congenial tasks. Of the necessary drudgery of the profession, let us say nothing here. If it is criminal to accept pay for what one likes to do, he is indeed an offender.

But it should not be forgotten by the efficiency zealots that the college professor and his work represent an all-important principle in scientific management. Congeniality of task is a great factor of industrial economy, and the greatest promoter of both the employer's material interest and his peace of mind. The liberal arts professor's critics should remember that actual enjoyment of occupation is a greater stimulus to working well and working long than any office regulation or promise of salary.

The college professor is working hours enough. Not infrequently, he is working too many hours for either his own or the general good. The clear head and the buoyant heart are as indispensable to teaching