"But come, we do learn something," said Hungerford. "No, you don't, Joe," said Brockhurst. "You've translated the Iliad--you've never known it. You've recited in Horace--you have no love for him. You've excavated the plays of Shakespeare, a couple of acts at a time; you don't know what Hamlet means or Lear, the beauty of it all has escaped you. You've _recited_ in Logic and Philosophy, but you don't understand what you're repeating. You're only _repeating_ all the time. Your memory is trained to hold a little knowledge a little time--that's all. You don't enjoy it, you're rather apologetic--or others are." "Well, what other system is there?" said Regan. "There is the preceptorial system of England," said Brockhurst, "where a small group of men are in personal contact with the instructor. In French universities, education is a serious thing because failure to pass an examination for a profession means two extra years of army service. Men don't risk over there, or divide up their time heeling the _News_ or making a team. In Germany a man is given a certain number of years to get a degree, and I believe has to do a certain amount of original work. "But of course the main trouble here is, and there is no blinking the fact, that the colleges have surrendered unconsciously a great deal of their power to the growing influence of the social organization. In a period when we have no society in America, families are sending their sons to colleges to place themselves socially. Some of them carry it to an extreme, even directly avow their hope that they will make certain clubs at Princeton or Harvard, or a senior society here. It probably is very hard to control, but it's going to turn our colleges more and more, as I say, into social clearing houses. At present here at Yale we keep down the question of wealth pretty well; fellows like Joe Hungerford here come in and live on our basis. That's the best feature about Yale to-day--how it will be in the future I don't know, for it depends on the wisdom of the parents." "Social clearing house is well coined," said Hungerford. "I think it's truer though of Harvard." "That's perhaps because you see the mote in your neighbors' eyes," said Brocky rising. "Well, discussion isn't going to change it. Who's always talking about school for character--Pike or Brown? We might as well stand for that--but it would not be very wise to announce it to the American nation, would it?--we might be dubbed a reformatory. Fathers, send your sons to college--reform their characters, straighten out the crooks. At the end give 'em a degree of--of, say--G. B." "What's that, Brocky?" said Swazey, grinning with the rest. "Good Boy," said Brockhurst, who departed, as he liked, on the echoes of the laugh which he had inspired. "Whew!" said Hungerford, with a comical rubbing of his head. "What struck me?" "And I expect to make Phi Beta Kappa," said Swazey, with an apologetic laugh.