Page:The Genius of America (1923).pdf/127

 self. Follow him to college, whither he is sure to be impelled by his self-distrust and his naïve confidence in a prescribed routine. No organ within him craves intellectual food; but something without him, a continuous social whisper has suggested that there is salvation in a bachelor's degree. College life is a kind of select soirée, at which it will give him 'a comfortable sense of superiority' merely to be seen. By him we explain why academic culture does not "take." With him in our eye, we expound a curious phrase in wide use among undergraduates.

Every year I talk with a considerable number of young persons, about to enter the junior and senior classes, concerning their program of studies; and I regularly begin by asking what they are doing in certain prescribed subjects, such as foreign languages. Quite regularly seven out of ten of them answer, with a happy smile and a reminiscent sigh: "Thank goodness, I worked off my French and German last year."

To which I regularly and hopelessly retort: "But have you worked up your German? Have you worked in your French? We don't require you to take them for the look of the thing. Can you use them?"

And they quite regularly respond: "Oh, no!