A couple of stout logs were roaring in the fireplace, before which, propped up with cushions, the majority of the company were sprawling. Stover took his place, filling his pipe. His arrival brought a little constraint; the conversation, which had been at fever pitch as he stood rapping at the door, dwindled to desultory remarks on inconsequential things.
“Well, I certainly am among the fruits of the class,” thought Stover, eyeing the rather shaggy crowd, where sweaters and corduroys predominated and the razor had passed not too frequently.
In the midst of this hesitation, Regan’s heavy frame crowded the doorway, accompanied by Brockhurst. Both were surprised at Stover’s unaccustomed presence, Brockhurst looking at him with a little suspicion, Regan shaking his hand with new cordiality.
“Have you, too, joined the debating circle?” he said, crowding into a place by Stover and adjusting the fire with a square-toed boot.
“Debating circle?” said Stover, surprised.
“Why, this is the verbal prize ring of the college,” said Regan, laughing. “We settle everything here, from the internal illnesses of the university to the external manifestations of the universe. Pike can tell you everything that is going to happen in the next fifty years, and so can Brocky—only they don’t agree. I’m around to get them out of clinches.”
“Reckon you get rather heated up yourself, sometimes, Tom,” said Lake.
“Oh, I jump in myself when I get tired of listening.”
Swazey, Lake, Ricketts, and Brown in one corner installed themselves for a session at the national game, appropriating the lamps, and leaving the region about the fireplace to be lit by occasional gleams from the fitful hickories.
Brockhurst, the champion of individualism, was soon launched on his favorite topic.
“The great fault of the American nation, which is the fault of republics, is the reduction of everything to the average. Our universities are simply the expression of the forces that are operating outside. We are business colleges purely and simply, because we as a nation have only one ideal—the business ideal.”
“That’s a big statement,” said Regan.
“It’s true. Twenty years ago we had the ideal of the lawyer, of the doctor, of the statesman, of the gentleman, of the man of letters, of the soldier. Now the lawyer is simply a supernumerary enlisting under any banner for pay; the doctor is overshadowed by the specialist with his business development of the possibilities of the rich; we have politicians, and politics are deemed impossible for a gentleman; the gentleman cultured, simple, hospitable, and kind, is of the dying generation; the soldier is simply on parade.”
“Wow!” said Ricketts, jingling his chips. “They’re off.”
“Everything has conformed to business, everything has been made to pay. Art is now a respectable career—to whom? To the business man. Why? Because a profession that is paid $3,000 to $5,000 a portrait is no longer an art, but a blamed good business. The man who cooks up his novel according to the weakness of his public sells a hundred thousand copies. Dime novel? No; published by our most conservative publishers—one of our leading citizens. He has found out that scribbling is a new field of business. He has convinced the business man. He has made it pay.”
“Three cards,” said Swazey’s voice. “Well, Brocky, what’s your remedy?”
“A smashing war every ten years,” said Brockhurst shortly.
“Why, you bloody butcher,” said Regan, who did not seize the idea, while from the card-table came the chorus:
“Hooray, Brocky, go it!”
“That’s the way!”
“You’re in fine form tonight!”
“And why a war?” said Pike, beginning to take notice.
“A war has two positive advantages,” said Brockhurst. “It teaches discipline and obedience, which we profoundly need, and it holds up a great ideal, the ideal of heroism, of sacrifice for an ideal. In times of war young men such as we are are inspired by the figures of military leaders, and their imaginations are stirred to noble desires by the word ‘country.’ Nowadays what is held up to us? Go out—succeed—make money.”
“That’s true, a good deal true,” said Regan abruptly. “And the only remedy, the only way to fight the business deal, is to interest young men in politics, to make them feel that there are the new battlefields.”
“Now Tom’s in it,” said Lake, threshing the cards through his fingers. At the card-table the players began to listen, motioning with silent gestures.
“I am off,” said Regan, bending forward eagerly and striking his fist against his open hand. “That’s the one great thing our colleges should stand for; they ought to be great political hotbeds.”
“And they’re not,” said Brockhurst shortly.
“The more’s the pity,” said Regan. “There I’m with you. They don’t represent the nation: they don’t represent what the big masses are feeling, fighting, striving for. By George, when I think of the opportunity, of what this place could mean, what it was meant to mean! Why, every year we gather here from every State in the Union a picked lot, with every chance, with a wonderful opportunity to seek out and know what the whole country needs, to be fired with the same great impulses, to go out and fight together—” He stopped clumsily in the midst of a sentence, and flung back his hair, frowning. “Good government, independent thinking, the love of the fight for the right thing ought to begin here—the enthusiasm of it all. Hang it, I can’t express it; but the idea is immense, and no one sees it.”
“I see it,” said Pike. “That’s my ambition. I’m going back; I’m going to own my own newspaper some day, and fight for it.”
“But why don’t the universities reflect what’s out there?” said Regan with a gesture.
“Because, to make it as it should be, and as it was, a live center of political discussion,” said Brockhurst, “you’ve got to give the individual a chance, break through this tyranny of the average, get away from business ideas.”
“Just what do you mean when you say we are nothing but a business college?” said Stover, preparing to resist any explanation. He understood imperfectly what Regan was advocating. Politics meant to him a sort of
