He Never Was

A perennially provocative commentator on the U. S. college scene is Princeton's judicious, pince-nezzed. slow-spoken Dean Christian Gauss. His current contributions have been in the Saturday Evening Post, entitled "The Good Old Times." Excerpts :

"Not very long ago a friend of mine-- one of that fine, hearty type who believes in being a Yale man and shaming the devil--told me his troubles. He was far from satisfied with the way things were going presently at New Haven, or, for that matter, at any of the American colleges. We were all in a bad way. He had no particular criticism to make of the teaching; this did not greatly interest him. 'But undergraduates,' he held--and on this point he was positive--'are not the men they used to be.'. . .

"When the old graduate returns to his college and finds everything changed, his attitude illustrates the working of a law of psychology. He tells you first of all that undergraduates are younger now than they were in his time. This, we have seen, is a mistake. He tells you also that they are smaller. I recall one such enthusiast who insisted to me that present-day graduates were 'runty.' Here he is more seriously in error, for where physical examinations and measurements in the colleges have continued over any long stretch of time, they indicate, if anything, that the average freshman is somewhat taller. . . .

"With the disappearance of the isolated college and the reduction of American life to a more general common denominator, the modern undergraduate as a rule does not wish to be, much less to appear to be, a collegian. In his own opinion, he and the man of the world are as like as two peas. He abhors the collegiate; and if he is so, there is this extenuating circumstance in his favor: He is so in spite of himself. . . .

"Blind enthusiasts for the past can only remind us of that group of grey-bearded New Englanders who, we are told, had gathered about the stove in the little post office at the crossroads, and were bemoaning the regrettable changes and universal degeneration round about them. 'Even Deacon Jones,' added the postmaster, 'isn't the man he used to be.' The approving squire summed it all up when he concluded sadly, 'No, and he never was.' So it is with the college undergraduate. It is true that in many respects he is not the man he used to be. The record seems to indicate, however, that he never was the man whom the overrueful old graduate imagines him to have been."