IX—The New Education
So you’re going back to college in a fortnight,” I said to the Bright Young Thing on the veranda of the summer hotel. “Aren’t you sorry?”
“In a way I am,” she said, “but in another sense I’m glad to go back. One can’t loaf all the time.”
She looked up from her rocking-chair over her Red Cross knitting with great earnestness.
How full of purpose these modern students are, I thought to myself. In my time we used to go back to college as to a treadmill.
“I know that,” I said, “but what I mean is that college, after all, is a pretty hard grind. Things like mathematics and Greek are no joke, are they? In my day, as I remember it, we used to think spherical trigonometry about the hardest stuff of the lot.”
She looked dubious.
“I didn’t elect mathematics,” she said.
“Oh,” I said, “I see. So you don’t have to take it. And what have you elected?”
“For this coming half semester—that’s six
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