By-Products of Higher Education

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB

ONE of the twenty-five or thirty greatest state universities in America is spread out all over the better part of our town, which is four times farther from Boston than from Chicago by rail, and forty times farther from Chicago than from Boston as to its state of mind.

Here everything is taught that mortals know, plus much that mortals guess at; and the campus squirrels impartially accept love-offerings from the palms of youngsters representing every state in the Union and all the nations of the world.

Here, too, flourish some extraordinarily interesting human types who, while sustaining no relation to the University beyond the fact that they live within sound of her clock-chimes, have been curiously influenced by the great school, and are known to more students than any member of her thirteen faculties.

I have been waiting, with increasing impatience, for a book to appear dealing with these eccentric folk who are to be found in every academic community. Surely, the delay of such a work is not due to dearth of data or lack of a market. It is in the hope that some clever imagination may be stirred to the point of analyzing these ’by-products of higher education ’ that one ventures to hint at the alluring possibilities of this subject by citing a single example.

Persons who have been given to observing, of late (see recent reflective literature), that there is no longer any conflict between Science and Religion, need to be informed that until our Aunt Polly Briggs retires from the field no such conciliation is possible.

Many years ago, this quaint little old lady is said to have besought heavenly illumination to direct her to the most effective process of protecting religious beliefs from the baneful effects of modern scientific declarations. The vision vouchsafed her, as a reward of her supplications, led Aunt Polly to the inauguration of a campaign fashioned after Joshua’s siege of Jericho; and in conformity to that programme she began to attend such lectures as she considered most dangerously subversive of faith, where she occasionally asked questions, to the discomfiture of the scientists and the undisguised delight of their disciples.

Of course, the customary regulations anent the attendance and conduct of classroom visitors are written in our bylaws; but these rules have never been rigidly enforced, and since Aunt Polly’s supernal commission involved her inspection of so many scientific redoubts that considerable time was required to make the rounds of all the works, she never appeared in any one lecture-hall with sufficient frequency or regularity to be rated a nuisance.

Moreover, Aunt Polly was not a noisy, controversial old shrew. Had that been true of her, it would have been an easy matter to put her out, — on further reflection, I am not so sure of that, — but her queries were always offered in a quavering tone of such bland and childlike innocence, and she was so pathetic a little figure in her old-fashioned gown and diminutive black bonnet, that the instructor who had attempted to deal harshly with her would have invited the reproach of the students, in whose opinion Aunt Polly was not a visitor, but an institution.

She never talked back. That was the exasperating feature of her inquisition. She simply asked her naïve question in a sweet, tremulous treble, and accepted the reply with quiet resignation; whereupon there would ensue a dense silence, to which the class invariably offered its respectful contribution, and in that eloquent silence the banal stupidity of the professor’s answer would stand forth, in high relief, like the smile of the storied cat, long after everything else in the lecture had paled into total eclipse.

Dr. Preston Clarke, our well-known anthropologist, at the close of a fascinatingly interesting address concerning our early ancestry, — a discourse which alluded to Father Adam only in a facetious phrase, — would be fondling his clay model of the flat cranial roof of the exhumed Pithecanthropus, and murmuring something about ‘proof conclusive’ that our kind had been antedated by a pre-human type. At this point, Aunt Polly would avail herself of the first full pause, — faculty men always vocalize their punctuation: ‘ah’ having the value of a comma, ‘er’ being the equivalent of a semicolon, ‘um,’ of a period, etc., — and while all beholders held their breaths, she would inquire, meekly, ‘ Might that not have been the head of an idiot?’

Now, for Dr. Clarke to reply, solemnly, ‘No, madam; this skull could not, by any possibility, have belonged to an idiot!' would almost amount to predicating precisely the opposite of his own glistening dome. He understood the futility of entering upon a lengthy explanation, for there would be no visible reaction. Aunt Polly would say no more. His brief answer would be the exact truth, spoken in the spirit of a scientist: ‘We conjecture that this was a normal skull.’ But ‘conjecture’ is always an awkward word to use in either a major or a minor premise, especially if one expects to say ‘therefore’ somewhere in the conclusion.

There would be nothing further from Aunt Polly. She had done her bit. Having again marched around Jericho, she could put back into camp and call it a day’s work. Some youth in the back row would relieve the blistering silence in his immediate zone, by whispering to his neighbor, ‘Aunt Polly has spilled the beans again! ’

Or, Professor John Henry Browne, our celebrated geologist, in the course of demonstrating his belief that our little planet was once a molten mass which has but recently cooled sufficiently to permit the presence of life upon its surface, would be saying that the internal heat of the earth, at a depth of twenty-eight miles, is known to melt granite; whereupon Aunt Polly could be depended upon to ask, ‘How deep is the deepest hole anybody ever dug?’

Professor Browne knows exactly how deep is that hole, for he has been there. He has often told the class all about the famous hole. It is a very, very deep hole — all of six and one fourth miles in depth. There is nothing to do but repeat this fact, which he does. Aunt Polly makes no comment. Neither doth she blow upon the ram’s horn. But another trip has been made around Jericho.

There is a rumor to the effect that, not very long ago, a small and select group waited upon Aunt Polly and informed her, gently but firmly, that her continued visits to the lecture-rooms would be contingent upon a definite promise to refrain from disturbing lecturers with questions, and that she promised.

At all events, Aunt Polly no longer makes inquiries. But she still attends lectures, being partial to geology and anthropology. She sits in the front row, a little apart from the unbelievers — a Nemesic spirit. When anything is said that puts a crimp in the opening pages of Genesis, she heaves a sobbing sigh, so full of heart-break and the eloquence of saintly sorrow, that he is a wellpoised sage, indeed, who can lightly toss a flippant, fling at ‘the early Hebraic mythology.’

If Aunt Polly’s endurance equals her zeal, one trembles for the fate of the besieged Jerichoans.