But during the struggle for prizes that have a value as collateral, the Prize and the Rhetoric were forgotten. Yet Fate decreed it so, and one day last week I met a Harvard youth, whose ambition was Literature, and he was in the grinding turmoil of a Volume. He was studying on compulsion, with intent to work off a Condition, and the book he was reading with such violence was the Rhetoric of my College days. With a flush of pride it came to me that I was a Prizeman, and I offered, out of the goodness of my heart, to tutor the youth, so that after five lessons of an hour each he could grind the Condition to powder. To prove my fitness, the young man put me through a slight quiz, and alas! all of the beautiful truths and facts of the Rhetoric had slipped me, save this alone: “The three requisites in correct writing are Clearness, Force, and Elegance.” Every address that Professor Adams Sherman Hill, who wrote the Rhetoric, ever gave began with this formula. Mr. Barrett Wendell, Heir-Apparent to his ideas and Chair, does the same; and the Shock-headed Youth, who occupies the same relation to the professorship that the infant Duke of York does to the throne of England, always settles himself in his seat with his elbows on the table, coughs gently, and prefaces his lecture by saying to the admiring Freshmen: “Gentlemen, the three requisites in correct writing are Clearness, Force, and Elegance.” Professor Hill has in one book, by actual count, twenty-seven different propositions that he divides into three parts. I have forgotten them all save the one just named. This statement I never can forget. I hold it with a deathless grasp that defies the seasons and sorrows of time: for there are things burned so deep into one’s soul that the brand can never be removed; and should reason abdicate, I’ll gibber through the grates of my padded cell at each pitying passer-by, “The three requisites in correct writing are Clearness, Force, and Elegance.” For years I have repeated this fetching formula on every possible occasion; and up to this date I have managed to drown the rising voice of conscience by the specious plea that a double standard of truth is justifiable in the present condition of society. In morals I have been a bimetalist. But after reading _On Compromise_, by John Morley, I am convinced that this juggling with the Eternal Verities is what has kept the race in darkness these many cycles; and I now admit the truth which I have long withheld, that Professor Hill’s three Requisites are gross humbuggery. I boldly state that Professor Hill does not know what the “Requisites” are; and I am sure that I do not. In fact I am looking for them anxiously; and should I ever find them, I’ll do as Shakespeare did—keep them to myself. I say further that inasmuch as Professor Hill does not know them, the Heir-Apparent and the Shock-headed Youth in the rush-line for the Chair cannot possibly be expected to know: so none of us know.