Sometimes on a small body of trustees, one multi-millionaire, by increasing or withdrawing his financial support, can control the whole policy of the college, and there are cases where the interference of the trustees has not worked for good in the interests of the college. The president of a college is as autocratic as the captain of a liner or the head boy of an English public school. He can make or unmake careers, and has a very large voice in the appointment, dismissal, and pay of the professors.

In each faculty or department of the university there is a Dean - not necessarily the most senior of the professoriate and the deans play an important and conspicuous part in the organization of their institution. The deans have annual meetings, and, apparently, spend a good deal of time in discussing their presidents. None of the staff is paid sufficiently. As everywhere else, and as it has been for all time, education is the worst paid of all human professions. "The cheapest thing going to-day,' says the Satirist, is education.' 'I pay my cook,' said Crates ironically, 'four pounds a year; but a philosopher can be hired for about sixpence and a tutor for three half-pence.' 'So to-day,' writes Erasmus, ‘a man stands aghast at the thought of paying for his boy's education a sum which would buy a foal or hire a farm servant.' 'Frugality it is another name for madness!' After 400 years the madness of Erasmus has not abated. The presidents themselves are not adequately remunerated, and though some have entertainment allowances, it would go hard with them if they had not other sources of income than those attached to their posts.

American universities are not hampered by tradition. They are willing to try new things, and if one experi

ment does not succeed they try another. For instance, Columbia University is so attracted by the success of the psychological tests used for entry into the American Air Force that it is proposing to give up its entrance examination, and to replace it by mechanical tests, which it claims will be able to show whether a boy is capable of profiting by a university education. The result of this experiment is likely to prove interesting, and it may possibly be extended. If it does show the capabilities of a boy who undergoes it, and thus saves the expense and worry of written and oral examinations, these might be done away with. One foresees only one danger in these physical tests. The American youth is so alert and quick that he not infrequently reacts before the stimulus is applied. The historical first-year students of the same university, which is never anything if not up-to-date, will in future be required to start history with a study of the Bolshevik disorders in the twentieth century and other present-day problems. Earlier periods will be studied afterwards, with particular reference to their bearing upon the events of to-day.

The average entrance age to an American university is about the same as in England, and the course is a little longer. Three to four years are taken for the B.A. degree; about three more for the M.A. There is a tendency to increase the length of time required for the professional degrees, such as those in law and medicine. A candidate who enters an American college or university is expected to have spent four years at a High School, and admission is given to such students as have obtained a given number of 'units.' A ‘unit' roughly corresponds with a quarter of a year's study in any subject at one of these secondary

schools, so that four years' study should produce sixteen such units.' A candidate has to produce evidence at most colleges or universities that he has completed fourteen or sixteen 'units,' and institutions requiring less than fourteen units' are not regarded as in the first class. Certain of the colleges and universities in the eastern States have coördinated their entrance qualifications under a College Entrance Examination Board, somewhat similar to that which exists in the northern universities of England. The standard of this Board is high, and a student is generally admitted by any of the eastern universities if he has passed the examination under the control of the Board in the subjects required by the college for entrance. Other universities, especially in the West and Middle West, and a few in the East, admit by certificate, this certificate being a statement from the headmaster of the school testifying as to the nature and amount of work done by the applicant. Such a certificate, if considered satisfactory, passes the candidate into the higher institution without further inquiry. The examination conducted by the Board is very complex, but the wind is tempered to the 'foreign' lamb, and foreigners, of whom there is a very large number being educated in the United States, receive concessions if they can show that they would really benefit by an advanced education.

Within the university the first-year men are 'freshmen,' the second-year men are 'sophomores,' a word which has fallen into desuetude in England. Third-year men are 'juniors,' and fourth-year men are 'seniors.'* There is a considerable and rather sharp

*Years ago I was watching the undergraduates scanning the lists of subjects and of lectures at Princeton for the coming year. After a summary and an impressed inspection I heard a sophomore say to a freshman, If we don't look out this Woodrow Wilson will turn our Princeton into a darned educational institution!'

cleavage between men of different years. For instance, in many of the luxurious clubs which in American universities, to some extent, replace the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, only 'juniors' and 'seniors' are eligible for election. A freshman in an English university is apt to look upon a secondyear man as immeasurably older than himself, and far more experienced in the conduct of life. The same is equally true in America. There are certain initiatory ceremonies which the freshman undergoes. These vary in different universities, and any attempt to interfere with them is futile, though they are sometimes accompanied with a certain measure of roughness. But they all tend to weld the newcomers into a 'class,' and a class is a very important factor in American university life. If you mention you are a graduate in one of their institutions you are at once asked, 'What class?' and the class dates from the year when you entered college. The class hangs together throughout life. It has a periodical reunion at its old. university, when it usually avails itself of the opportunity for dressing-up which is dear to all mankind, but somewhat more suppressed on the eastern than the western side of the Atlantic. At one of these reunions the class of a certain year will all appear dressed as cowboys; next year the next class will be dressed as Mexicans, and so on.

Gradually the freshmen sort themselves into their various studies and into their various clubs. There are fewer opportunities in an American university for the great mass of the students to engage in athletics, though the picked men are made even more of than with us. As there are no colleges, such as those of Oxford and Cambridge, there are no intercollegiate competitions. There are, however,

athletic contests between different classes. The rigor of the climate prevents outdoor exercise during a considerable part of the year. Unquestionably, one can play in the open air on more days in England than in the greater part of the States. This to some extent explains the perfection of the American indoor gymnasia. Even rowing is practised indoors in large tanks, where the boat is fixed, but the water travels.

Musical and Dramatic Clubs also abound, and the plays they produce are most admirably staged. It is far more frequent to meet an American student with a banjo or mandolin case under his arm than it is to meet an English undergraduate with a similar equipment. Their play and their music have a large part in the unofficial education of the young college men and maidens. In most of the colleges there is a permanent outdoor theatre, like that which Bradfield has made familiar to us in England.

The unit' system is continued throughout the university course. One of the most striking differences between English and American universities is that in the latter there is no honors course. At Oxford or Cambridge a man reading for a B.A. degree can pass Responsions and 'Mods' or the 'Previous,' and after that devote himself to an intensive study of one subject for the whole of his three years. In most of the American universities a considerable number of subjects are taken, and these are not followed very far, at any rate not so far as in our honors course. Another great difference is that there is no one final examination which admits to the B.A. degree. On the elective system so many ‘units' a year are taken, and at the end of the year the student is examined on each of these, and these annual examinations count toward the

final degree. The only difference between the third-year examination and that of the first or of the second year is that it is taken in different subjects. Another difference which is often deplored in the United States is that the examinations are conducted only by the teachers. External examiners are unknown, so that the student is apt to get up his teacher's lectures rather than the subject.

All the bigger universities have really magnificent clubs, where sleeping accommodation is provided as well as good libraries and good dining rooms. Some of these clubs, such as the Harvard Club at Boston, are very palatial, and most of the bigger eastern universities have stately clubhouses in New York. In many small towns, such as Madison, where hotel accommodation is limited, the University Clubs offer a cultivated and comfortable shelter for college men. In others, such as Lexington in Kentucky, the University Club is housed in part of a really magnificent hotel. Many of the students live in dormitories, or as we should call them, college buildings; but meals are not served there, and it is still the custom for students to take their meals at various dining rooms, and many students live and board in lodgings. Recently, however, enormous dining halls, some of them of great architectural dignity, have been springing up, and common meals are served there sometimes to as many as a thousand or twelve hundred students at a time.

Attendance at chapel varies in the different institutions. At Yale it is enforced, but enforced by an 'inviolable tradition that an institution of age and respectability hands down from the past to its youngest sons. The order is not of the faculty or powers above; far from it. It is the selfordained task of the undergraduate.'

Those universities which have the opportunity at their doorstep, are very devoted to rowing. Usually this is on a river, but at Princeton it takes place on the artificial lake already referred to, and at Madison on the charming lakes which encircle that very delightful little city. Track athletics, as the term runs, is also a favorite amusement, and the severity of the winter affords opportunities for skating and ice-boat competitions denied to the inhabitants of warmer countries. Football is a complete mystery to anyone who has not made an intensive study of American sports. There are all sorts of secret cries and code letters, and the captain directs the energies of his team by shouting mysterious cyphers which mean nothing to the outsider.

After graduation the alumnus seems to be even more passionately devoted to his university than he was while actually in residence in it. Apart from the large clubs already alluded to, there are innumerable associations, and in every town in America the members of one university get to know one another, and cling together like brothers. The 'class' system is a profound help in financing the universities. One 'class' will put up a dormitory, another will erect a new laboratory, and there is a strong spirit of inter-class' rivalry, which is a great help to the financial management of their alma mater.

There are a number of subjects taught in American universities which are rarely found in educational institutions on this side of the Atlantic. Perhaps the commonest of these is dentistry. Large and fully-equipped dental colleges flourish in most of the endowed and State universities, and to these come men from all over the world. In the very heart of North America you will find students from

Australia and South Africa, especially in the dental schools, where the professors take rank with those of other faculties. Veterinary science is also much followed, and in the agricultural schools, such as Ames in Iowa, they have an extremely complete course and fine laboratories devoted to the hygiene of the lower mammals. It was at Ames we came across a new discovery in vegetable pathology, which is likely to open a new chapter in the history of plant disease. One of the professors there has definitely shown that the curled leaf' which yearly destroys so many million of beetroots is due to some organism transmitted by an insect; and although this organism is ultra-microscopic and passes through the finest filters, it evidently undergoes some transformations, both in the body of the leaf and in the tissues of the beetroot. It behaves, in effect, very much like the invisible organism conveyed by the mosquito, which sets up yellow fever in man. Similar experiments have shown that similar causes produce a certain disease in the potato. This is conveyed also by an

It would take too long to enter into the subject of secret letter societies, which are banned in some universities, and welcomed in others. There is a notion that the number of 'society men' in the colleges is decreasing, but at Yale at any rate this is not so. Forty years ago only some sixty per cent of a 'class' belonged to any society. Five years ago the percentage had risen to seventy-five. The initiation into these secret societies is kept profoundly dark, and although the members of some of them have distinctive pins or rings which they wear upon their waistcoats, ties, or watch-chains, it is considered to be the height of ill-breeding to make the faintest reference to them. Anyone interested in the matter can obtain

some insight into it by reading the somewhat sombre and certainly prolix Salt, a novel which covers the ground of both the Loom of Youth and Sinister Street, but set in an American back-. ground. If Salt be a true account of what happens in the admission of a member of a secret society to his society, it would seem that our young American barbarians at play have learned something from the Red Indians of the past. On the whole, the students are by no means so noisy as they were in years gone by; and as in the older universities of our land, the traditional 'town and gown rows' have almost disappeared.

Many of the undergraduates earn their living and pay their way while passing through college. Some of the poorer -the Armenians and the Greeks manage to scrape together enough to live on by pressing the clothes, and sometimes cleaning the boots, of their more financially-favored fellow students. Many students make enough to see them through term by waiting at summer resorts in the vacations. Sir Michael Foster once told me that, returning from a lecturing tour in California, he was stopping the night in Seattle, and was rather surprised when half-way through dinner the youth who was waiting on him, and who seemed to become suddenly aware whom he was serving, seized his hand and said, 'Professor, I am very glad to make your acquaintance! Many and

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many are the weary hours I have spent over your textbook.' The waiter in this case came from one of the eastern universities, and was paying his way through his course by waiting during the summer in Seattle. Others take care of some rich man's grounds, or stoke his furnaces. There is a strenuous desire to get a university degree, and men will sacrifice half their time to make enough money to spend the other half in preparing for their examinations. Another class often become secretaries or stenographers to the presidents or professors, and there is not that shyness in committing the conduct of the university politics to the students that obtains with us. Many obtain a livelihood by editing college papers. Some of them not only edit the journals, but set the type and print them.

There are, at present, nearly five thousand foreign students studying in American universities, and now that these institutions are making good in so many ways, one cannot but feel that the verse of Miss Mary Coleridge will become truer in a wider and larger

sense:

We were young, we were merry, we were very, very wise,

And the door stood open at our feast, When there passed by a woman with the West in her eyes,

And a man with his back to the East.

For a while the world will wend westward.