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About The Hesperian / (Lincoln, Neb.) 1885-1899 | View Entire Issue (Nov. 1, 1893)
. ' KaiaSliMJrenE33tMlllnfflgpM ffi4fcr m , THE HESPERIAN '8 WWWWWltWWpWMWWMMWWMaMM i rrnMTMBi. IB iMiiiiliniililMiiaMiMIMIlMMM" possible to make n patron saint . of a cow, Chicago would do it, for Chicago does all things that are possible. "Dear me!'1 tho classical professors say when we protest against studying Greek, "Greek is very important, very. Why, Cato realized this so much that he studied Greek after he was eighty years of age.'"' I have always regarded it as a most con clusive evidence of Cato's unimpeachable good sense that he waited until that mature age to pursue his classical studies. I fancy if I were eighty years old 1 could study Greek, too. If I were so deaf I could not hear good music, so gouty I could not eat a good dinner, so ill-tempered I could not en joy good company, there is nothing in the world I should rather do than study Greek. "When I am very old and feeble and can move only with the assistance of a cane, I do not intend to take to knitting or crochet work; those golden years I intend to devote to the study of the beautiful Greek tongue. But while I have a sound body and senses moderately alert, I mean to enjoy a very large world that was made exclusively for fun. I will fill just as big a grave without Greek as with it, and if it is absolutely nec essary to kuow Greek to get into heaven, I have no doubt that they run a little prepara tory school outside the gates. Breakfast, lunch, supper those are the meals "assigned" to us by the high author ity of the "Student's Hand Book.1' Of course it is very old-fashioned in me, but I can't help wondering where the dinner is coming in. A long time ago, when I went to district school, we used to have dinner in the middle and then a lunch before supper sometimes if we could get into the pantry conveniently without disturbing mother. And she didn't scold very much when she found the doughnuts gone, and she'd get a good warming supper anyway. We called it supper, too, for, bless you, we had our dinner at noou, as our fathers had before us, and as our children will have after us, unless they think it sounds prettier to call it "lunch." And mother's dinners, ah, but they wery good! She put everything on the table at once, and then we all sat down and father said grace another old-fogy custom of ours then we fell to and ate. We cleared our plates in the orthodox fashion so that mother didn't have to take them out in to the kitchen every few minutes to wash them and bring them back. Then we'd sit around and laugh and talk a bit. Of course I'm only an old fogy and can't keep up with the times. It's eat your breakfast and run, eat your "lunch" and run, eat your supper, and then you should "retire," for that's all you're fit for after one of your model mod ern days. All very brisk, very pushing, but somehow I like the old way best. i? Of all the exquisite bores that higher edu cation has inflicted upon society, the "broad student is certainly the most painful. Even the very "narrow" student is preferable, for he is unwittingly and unconsciously narrow, while the broad student is ostensively, pro fessionally and offensively "broad." He reads Carlyle and Browning, reads them ostensively and offensively, as he does every thing else. He studies very little and very seldom; he is afraid of crippling his imagina tion or .narrowing his sympathies by close application. Beside, he spends all of his time in being broad. He reads a great deal of very inferior literature because it is "broad" and unconventional. Indeed his breadth is more exclusive than other people's narrowness, for it excludes whatever is mild and decent and conventional, and enthrones whatever is a transgression of art or taste or ethics. He believes that the end of life is to think, and he devotes whole hours of the day and night to it. He is generally a scientific student, and he is very proud that he is in a course where "facts are not learned by rote, but where one muBt think." He spends a great deal of time in admiring sunsets and stars. Yet someway he does not get on very well In his classes; he is too large a man for' the world to understand. The ":1 J .V g ' i ).it-Wri .&& t OflfflWirnriHiwaTwBH siLm wriywuif m. .aim wpimswin .j. mnniwmimw !-'.-- iAxrxa. at Cf
