"Take another case. A man has a knack at the banjo or guitar, or has a
good voice. What is the spontaneous thing? To meet with other kindred
spirits in informal gatherings in one another's rooms or at the fence,
according to the whim of the moment. Instead what happens? You have our
university musical clubs, thoroughly professional organizations. If you
are material, you must get out and begin to work for them--coach with a
professional coach, make the Apollo clubs, and, working on, some day in
junior year reach the varsity organization and go out on a professional
tour. Again an organization conceived on business lines.
"The same is true with the competition for our papers: the struggle for
existence outside in a business world is not one whit more intense than
the struggle to win out in the _News_ or _Lit_ competition. We are like
a beef trust, with every by-product organized, down to the last
possibility. You come to Yale--what is said to you? 'Be natural, be
spontaneous, revel in a certain freedom, enjoy a leisure you'll never
get again, browse around, give your imagination a chance, see every one,
rub wits with every one, get to know yourself.'
"Is that what's said? No. What are you told, instead? 'Here are twenty
great machines that need new bolts and wheels. Get out and work. Work
harder than the next man, who is going to try to outwork you. And, in
order to succeed, work at only one thing. You don't count--everything
for the college.' Regan says the colleges don't represent the nation; I
say they don't even represent the individual."
"What would you do?" said Brown. "Abolish all organizations?"
"Absolutely," said Brockhurst, who never recoiled.
"What! Do you mean to say that the college of 1870 was a bigger thing
than the college of to-day?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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