For example, his devotion to his old boat-præsidio biremis scapha-was rewarded by the coursing of red blood thru his veins as he rowed it, and when the winds and waves, old wranglers, did their worst, he did not have to resort to prayers lest his yacht or launch add to the riches of the avaricious sea. If he was without the thrill of conscious power over the inanimate and mist the excitement of rapid career thru the waves, he enjoyed quite as much the contemplatively happy evening trips with his family and friends, the campfire and rude repast on the distant shore in sight of the city, and the quiet row home when night's candles were lighted in the sky. If he did not set his table with the rarities of faraway climes, he enjoyed still more the unbought feast from the little garden whose soil he turned himself. He could not afford the luxury of cut flowers in winter, but he did not miss the prime to mark How sprung his plants, and how the bee If he could not go to the Georgian Bay, or to the seashore, or to lands across the ocean, he could enjoy still more than those who did so the beautiful environment in which he was placed. For the Professor lived in a spot whose praises could be fitly sung only by a Catullus or a Horace. That little corner of earth smiled on him beyond all others. He never lookt across the expanse of Mendota from Observatory Hill without thinking of Master Izaak Walton: "I tell you, scholar, when I sat last on this primrose bank, and looked down these meadows, I thought of them, as Charles the Emperor did of the city of Florence, That they were too pleasant to be looked on but only on holidays.'" Among all his Perquisites this was not far from being the greatest, and his friends who for a few hundred dollars were persuaded to go to live amid the smoke and din of a large university city were agreed with him-when it was too late. What was the need of a vast variety? If the soul were kept in health, it needed no more variety of scene than the body needed variety of food if it were in health. Few foods were necessary, or even acceptable, to the unspoiled palate, for That which is not good is not delicious To a well-governed and wise appetite. And in the same way there were few elements in nature which were necessary for the delight of the soul. Why Europe for a vacation? Could an exile from his own country fly from himself also? Did any one change anything but the sky when he went to the seashore? Did not Fear and Threats sit like twin brethren on the sailyards of the yacht, and did not Black Care climb up onto the house-boat, and squeeze into the automobile, and sit on the donkey that carried the tourist up the Drachenfels? The conclusion of the whole matter was that if he couldn't have what he liked without bowing under a great burden or losing the art of real enjoyment, he would like what he had, and let it go at that. If increase in worldly wealth meant more pleasure, it meant also more care. Better was an handful with quietness than both the hands full with travail and vexation of spirit. He would take the advice of Carlyle and divide the denominator of the fraction of life, instead of multiplying the numerator. If a man got meat and clothes, what mattered it whether he had £10,000, or £10,000,000, or £70 a year. He could get meat and clothes for that; and he would find very little difference intrinsically, if he were a wise man. How charming was divine philosophy! Surely this kind of philosophy was the guide of life. The merchandise of it was better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold. When Hygeia smiled on him-and by Hygeia the Professor meant, not dieting and the Nogoda Method, but mens sana in corpore sano-he asked for nothing more than he had. Hoc erat in votis: he was happy in his little Sabine salary. So you see that, after all, the Professor led a life of luxury, and was fortunate beyond others in his choice of occupation. His financial income, thanks to his philosophy, was ample for his wants; his life was filled with peace and pleasantness; his work counted at the same time for delight and for gain; he was full of the zest of anticipation and the satisfaction of realization; he was in the society of the best and the greatest who had existed either in reality or in the imagination of the idealist. And all this was because of his Perquisites, of whose substantial nature men in other professions had so little appreciation that it never occurred to them to envy him. Without them, he would have been as poor as winter; with them he was as rich as Croesus, as the saying ran in the pre-Petroleum period. When a man takes this view of the relations between money and happiness, it is hard to starve him. You can see how it was that the Professor's little salary sufficed, and how he never got so far behind in the long vacation as not to be able to catch up by March of the following year. And you can understand why, when he sat under the Thanksgiving sermon and listened to the long enumeration of the woes of the world which was designed to make him happy by contrast, he succeeded in realizing that there were a great many classes of people who were even below him in the scale of wretchedness, and why he felt guilty for being so happy and prosperous, and gave away, under the stress of conviction, money that should have gone to the decent clothing of his own family. And you can understand, too, why he was conscience-stricken to think that he had unintentionally fostered the spirit of discontent in the hearts of his brethren rather than that of wise and happy acquiescence. He wisht that they were all even as he, without these bonds. Bonds? Of course. The Professor was human, and sometimes fell short of the glory of perfect contentment. There were days when he was not quite convinced that a little more money wouldn't do him considerable good. Not that he wanted it for himself; he simply wanted to improve what he had learned from grave sociological friends to call his environment. In other words, the Professor was not living alone unto himself. He had various creditors, and he had a family; and neither had yet discovered as fully as he could have wisht the economic phases of philosophy. Whatever his own frame of mind, he had to provide for the unphilo sophic wants of his family circle. His Perquisites were not negotiable. And then, the Professor himself, truth compels me to say, was not absolutely secure in his citadel. Hygeia was not always propitious. Sometimes his sleep was not aery light, from pure digestion bred, and he was not proof against moods. At such times he rubbed Aladdin's lamp long and earnestly and apprehensively-before the genie appeared. Of course you know that philosophy operates best when the philosopher is in a healthy frame of mind and body, and doesn't really need it-something like bargains: you are not in position to make a really good one unless you are also perfectly able to get along without it. There were times when the Professor felt that it would have been a vivid enjoyment, and one which would not have hurt him irretrievably, if he could have had a little more money than he absolutely needed. Sometimes, when both his liver and his imagination were disordered, he was dangerously near being tempted to wish that he could have about two hundred dollars-yes, two hundred and fifty, to make perfectly sure-added to his salary: just enough to make his study warm and comfortable while he was laboring on the magnum opus which was to confer immortal fame upon his institution, enough to relieve him of the care and worry incident to minute economy, to increase his library, to provide against sickness and surgery in his family, to quiet his apprehensions of unseemly old age and helplessness and changes of fashion in millinery and dressmaking, and to make possible a luxury or two-a real tailor-made suit of clothes, a cook-box and a safety razor, a few dollars for tickets to the Charity Ball to quiet his conscience for not having specialized in sociology, a carriage ride for the family two or three times a year, the proper advertisement of his marriageable daughters, a trip abroad before he died, such novels of the month as were going to endure as long as the English tongue should be spoken, a pianola or a Victor Phonograph But Quo, Musa, tendis? Desist, you jade. Leave off referring to the pleasures of the gods! UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN GRANT SHOWERMAN II WHEN THE SCHOOLMAN FAILS June is the month when they kill schoolmasters. Hesiod and Spenser have left this out of their Shepherd's Calendars. Educational journals say little of it; papers at conventions avoid it. Henry van Dyke has written upon What to do when lost in the woods." May we not have a syllabus of first aid to the discharged? 66 When the schoolman begins to see that the influences working against him are of the sort and strength that have landed good soldiers lame and sore and heart-sick, outside the breastworks, he needs words of consolation. I would like to furnish some. I would like to be able to compose a few pages that a pounded brother might turn to and find salve between the leaves; a few prescriptions that you might deem worth laying by in your medicine closet against the time which, if history repeats itself, is a possibility for all of us. For the professional life of the American schoolmaster is beset by uncertainty. Except in very few cities we are laboriously building houses of cards which, no matter how much care and effort we have expended, we may tomorrow surmount with one careless addition that falls flat and tumbles the whole structure to ruin. Extended discussion of the influence of schoolmen's dismissals affecting education may be found in current essays on tenure: some men urging for enactments for permanency or fair trial, others contending that facility of discharge is necessary to get rid of the unfit. This paper is for the schoolman himself and for the solace of his own mortification and pain. He needs consolatory suggestion, for he lacks a daily discipline that others have. He has little practise in sustaining frequent defeat. His trouble comes in a great wave, uproot |