Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 253
We hope that all students will duly turn out at 11.00 a.m. to exercise their privilege of voting for the new members of the Students’ Government League. The different faculties have suspended all lectures for the day in order to enable students to vote at eleven o’clock. Get in early. It is the duty of every student to remember that all the activities of college life ought to be his earnest concern. Don’t miss any. On page four you can see who the candidates are and what the Government League is. But come anyway. There will be student ushers who will tell you how to vote.
Also — for those who have voted ——
free exhibition of conjuring
All student voters are invited at 11.30 to come into Hoot-It-Up Hall and see a free exhibition of conjuring given for the benefit of the students by Signor Ninni the distinguished Italian conjurer now appearing at the Star Theater. What we need at Alma Mater is all-around culture. Conjuring is just as much a part of the student’s work as mathematics or football. All up!
And don’t forget ——
Later in the day at 3.00 p.m. — students’ annual esquimo dog race, followed at 4.00 p.m. by grand reception by the lock and key society to the visiting delegate from the ojibway indian reservation technical school.
Wednesday, Third of the Month. More Extracts from the Daily Ding Dong.
Fellow students! To-night is the big night — the one night in the year. Leave aside all books for this one evening and turn out for the alma mater follies. The performance is staged for 8.00 in the Alma Mater Theater and runs till 1.00 a.m. Tickets $5.00 a seat and up.
All reports say that the Follies this year will be bigger, brighter, and brainier than in any year before. Special features this year include a buck and wing clog dance by the Trustees of Alma Mater, champion mouth organ solo by the Dean of Research, and a huge ensemble chorus composed of all the girls worth looking at in Alma Mater. All up!
Thursday, Fourth of the Month. The Daily Speaks for the Fourth Time.
We regret that in our yesterday’s number we omitted to give adequate publicity to the joint meeting of the Mathematical and Economic Societies to hold a joint debate on “How to Make Money Out of the Stock Exchange.” We are glad to learn that the meeting was in any case a crowded one.
Lack of space prevented us from giving more than a passing announcement of the annual meeting of the Students’ Rod and Gun Club, of the Students’ Deep Sea Travel Association, the Bridge and Poker Club, the Night Off Society, and the Rest from Study Association.
To-day the Daily earnestly hopes that every student of Alma Mater will turn out to see the final All-Continent Ping Pong Match between Alma Mater and the University of Tugugigalpa, Honduras. Alma Mater will be represented by Ted Swatgood, who has done more to put Alma Mater over at Ping Pong than any student alive or deserving to live. Tugugigalpa will be championed by the redoubtable Joe Logwood, one of the big figures of the Ping Pong world.
If Alma Mater wins — that is, if Ted beats Logwood — we are tied for the semi-final. Alma Mater has put big work into this; that is to say, Ted has been training under a staff of ten coaches for a year at the expense of the college. It won’t do to lose. If this college carries off the Ping Pong pennant, it is a grand thing for everybody connected with Alma Mater; this muscle-building, character-making sport is what is needed to build us up. It is all the greater pity that this year only four out of our four thousand students actually played the game. But we expect the others to make up for this by turning out en masse to help down Logwood.
Friday, Fifth of the Month. The Daily Still Exhorting.
All students, attention! A principal feature for this afternoon will be an exhibition of dancing guinea pigs in Hoot-It-Up Hall. This entertainment, which is being staged by the Department of Anthropology, will run from 2.00 p.m. till 6.00 p.m. Students are requested to get into their seats sharply on time so as not to keep the pigs waiting. Remember the hour, 2.00 p.m., and the name, Guinea Pigs. All afternoon classes suspended.
We beg to call attention to a letter appearing in another column and forwarded to us by Mr. Hustle Moore of the class. Mr. Moore draws attention to the fact that under present conditions at Alma Mater the students have not enough opportunity to get to know one another. He suggests a new organization to be called the who do you know club, with power from the students’ council to collect fees and to compel attention. The Daily is entirely in sympathy. The only way to get the students of this college to appreciate one another is to levy a suitable fee and fine those who drop out.
(Friday Continued)
supplemental item set by the Daily in black
The Daily is under the melancholy duty of chronicling the death of one of our fellow students, Mr. J. Smith, under very distressing and baffling circumstances. The doctors who attended our deceased fellow student declare that he died from over-study. This seems inexplicable, but apparently the medical facts warrant no other conclusion. That any student at Alma Mater College could be exposed to a danger of this sort is extremely difficult to believe. It may have been that the mistaken young man was purveying books to his room and making surreptitious use of his room as a place of study. This, of course, would be extremely difficult to prevent.
The sad occurrence teaches us, however, one lesson at Alma Mater, namely, that every effort should be made to brighten and diversify our college life. Our present activities are confined perhaps to too limited a field, and it might be well to call a general meeting to form a wider activities’ league. Meanwhile there is one thing that we can do to honor the memory of our misguided fellow student. We want to see every man turn out at his funeral and testify in an unmistakable way to the grief we feel. We suggest a try-out rehearsal for the mourners in Hoot-It-Up Hall and then a big grand rally on the day itself. All up, boys, for Smith’s funeral. Don’t forget the name, Smith.
Saturday. Last Call. (Poster in the corridors of Alma Mater.)
Owing to the nervous prostration of all the editors, the Daily will not appear till Monday.
Willie Nut Tries to Enter College
THE NEWS ITEM in last week’s paper to the effect that Willie Nut, High School graduate, attempted suicide excited no doubt but little interest and little comment. It was lost from sight among the world-events of a rapid age.
Under such circumstances, it is perhaps appropriate to make a brief statement of the facts in regard to Willie Nut’s attempted demise. It came as a direct consequence of his inability to get admitted to the freshman class of any of the great universities. As the difficulties he encountered are typical of the present situation all over the country, I propose to set down briefly the history of Willie’s case.
1919 to 1929 Willie Nut attended “Prep” and “High.” He studied Latin, Basketball, Arithmetic, Needlework, Chemistry, Character Building, and, in short, the full program of up-to-date education. He took 95 per cent in Latin, made the Ping Pong Team, and delivered a five-minute graduation speech on the Greatness of George Washington. The boy being thus entirely equipped, his father, William Nut, Senior, bought him a tuxedo jacket and tried to enter him at College.
The first application was made to one of the older historic colleges of the East. It is not fair to name it here, as the President has expressly disclaimed all responsibility for Nut’s attempted suicide. But the documents in the case are as follows.
There was first a letter of application for admission sent by William Nut, Senior, on his son’s behalf. As an answer to it there came back a letter from the Second Assistant to the Secretary of the President in regard to the “candidacy” of Willie Nut.
William Nut, Senior,
Nut Town.
Dear Sir:
In regard to your son’s application for entry with the first year of this university, I shall be obliged if you will fill out answers to the following questions:
1.
How many quarterings of nobility has your son got?
2.
What ancestors of your son’s fought in the American Revolution?
3.
Did you yourself ever fight in the American Revolution, and how did you come out?
Willie Nut’s parents having sent answers to these questions, the following further communication was received by Mr. Nut, Senior:
Dear Sir:
In regard to your son’s application for admission to this college, I am glad to inform you that his name has been duly passed and that he will be placed upon the probationary list of first year students. It is proper to inform you that it is hardly likely that he can be actually admitted to study until about 1940.
The Nut family, having decided not to wait until 1940, next tried another of the older eastern colleges and received the following answer from the Dean of the Committee of Rejection:
In regard to the application of William Nut, Junior, for admission to the freshman year of this college, I am happy to inform you that we have decided to eliminate the freshman class altogether. We find that the continued presence of students at the university impedes its work. As soon as the present upper year have been graduated, or expelled, we hope to limit the personnel of our college to the faculty, the football team, and the Rooters’ Club. In our opinion, this is all we need.
Being thus shut out from the colleges of the East, one after the other, Willie Nut next applied for admission to some of the better known colleges of the Middle West. Here, as everybody knows, admission is no longer based upon mere scholastic standing but on character. “We don’t want,” so wrote recently the President of one of these colleges, “students who think; we want students who live.” It is a resolute attempt not to let in dead ones that was expressed in Willie’s case by a letter sent to William Nut, Senior, in the following terms:
Dear Sir:
In regard to your son’s application for admission to college, we have to inform you that our selection of students is based chiefly on character. We shall therefore ask you to send out the following questionnaire, of which we enclose fifty copies, to fifty of your friends and acquaintances, in order that we may form an idea of your son’s candidacy. Afterwards we will send out another set of questionnaires to see how your friends stand themselves.
Questionnaire for Candidacy of Willie Nut
1.
What is your general idea of the character of Willie Nut, Junior?
2.
How would he measure up in an emergency? . . . If some one dropped a brick on him, how would he react to the brick? If he fell off a fifteen-story building, what would he do?
3.
What percentage would you say there is in Willie Nut’s character, (a) of personality, (b) of likability, (c) of enthusiasm, (d) of homogeneity, (e) of spontaneity, (f) of busibility?
4.
Would you consider young William Nut a leader? . . . and, if so, of what? . . . of men or of women? . . . What proportion of women would he lead?
5.
Getting down to facts, tell us if Willie Nut has ever been in jail, and if so where and for how long. Tell us at the same time any other dirty thing about him that occurs to you.
As a result of the questionnaire, fifty of Willie’s father’s friends wrote confidentially what they thought of Willie. That sank him.
Driven out from the Middle West, Willie next tried the colleges of the Central States, in the great metropolitan centers. In this case Mr. Nut, Senior, received the following communication:
Dear Sir:
Your son’s qualifications for admission have been (reluctantly) accepted by our Committee on the Exclusion of Students. It is necessary, however, for you to send personal letters of recommendation, and we think that on the strength of these we can still get rid of him. If you like to try, however, you are entitled to post them to us.
Mr. Nut, therefore, forwarded to the Dean of Rejected Students a bundle of personal letters in regard to his son, of which the following are typical not only of Willie’s case, but of students’ testimonials in general:
(a) from willie nut’s barber: letter of commendation
To whom it may concern:
This certifies that I have cut Willie Nut’s hair for the last ten years. I find him docile and tractable in the chair, able to stand pain, and intelligent in his outlook through a towel.
(b) from willie nut’s father’s garage man’s assistant
This certifies that Willie Nut has been in and out of this garage one time and another for quite a time. I should say that he was a boy that you might think had something in him. He has often helped me in changing tires and in filling gasoline without asking a cent for it.
(c) from the pay-as-you-enter bus driver who drove willie to school
To those whom it may concern:
For two and maybe three winter sessions Willie Nut drove to and from his High School in this bus. He always paid his fare like a little man; in fact, he couldn’t have gotten in if he hadn’t. He seemed to me a bright, intelligent lad, and every morning he used to say “Good morning” and every afternoon he’d say “Good afternoon.” I never knew him to confuse the two.
But here again Willie failed. The committee decided that the personal applications lacked something. They didn’t seem to have just the touch that was needed, the glow of warmth without heat, and the peculiar esprit, or esprieglerie that gives pep to a personal letter.
Willie was shut out.
Willie’s father next decided to try to get him admitted into one of the Military Academies that are just as good as any of the universities and charge ten times as much. Application was made to the Jefferson Jackson Military Institute, beautifully situated, as advertised, in the Ozone Mountains where the air is so salubrious a student couldn’t stay awake if he tried.
The answer to the application was as follows:
Dear Sir:
We shall be very pleased to admit your son to this Institute provided that you satisfy the following conditions, which we rigidly apply to all applicants for admission:
1.
He must bring with him two polo ponies, one for himself and one for me.
2.
Uniform being compulsory and uniform, he has got to bring four suits of it, three of them being big enough for me to wear.
3.
I would like him also to bring me a shot gun and a fishing rod and a pair of wading boots.
4.
His fees will be a thousand dollars a week and you must pay them before we will even look at him.
William Nut, Senior, didn’t find himself in a position to meet the conditions of the Institute, and Willie’s application was turned down.
It was decided next to make an effort to get Willie into one of the great Agricultural Colleges of the Southwest. Many people consider the training in these colleges, democratic and simple though it is, to be at least as good as, if not worse than, that of the larger universities. Willie Nut’s application for admission called forth the following reply from the Dean of the Pasture to William Nut, Senior:
Dear Friend:
Send your boy right along. We will be right glad to let him into the school, especially if he turns out to be a good milker. We would expect him to milk ten cows a day to start on, and we hope that he is pretty handy with hogs, too.
It was probably at this point that Willie Nut took the poison. He seems to have realized that entry in college in America is now practically closed. The real solution of his difficulty does not seem to have occurred to him before his unhappy attempt at suicide. The letter which he left behind him, or rather beside him, merely said:
Dear Pa:
Finding it impossible to enter college, I have just taken a draught of chlorate of lime. I shall soon be on my way to a place where no one is ever refused admittance and where there is still room for everybody.
It was only after Willie was fortunately resuscitated that a brilliant thought occurred to his parents which put an end to all Willie’s difficulties in entering American colleges. They have sent him to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.
Graduation Day at the Barbers College
NOTE: THESE ARE the days of colleges. There are colleges everywhere and for everything. There are colleges for medicine and colleges for religion, and for dentistry, and for the banjo and for mesmerism and correspondence. And wherever you go, they bring with them the same old college spirit of good fellowship and love of knowledge.
In witness of which, let me here produce, or reproduce, the following verbatim report of one of the recent college commencements. It was handed to me a day or so ago and refers to the closing exercises of Metropolitan School of Capilletics, which used to be called more simply the Barbers College.
The graduation exercises at the School of Capilletics were held yesterday during the lunch hour in the upper corridor of the academy, just next the cloak room. President Clip briefly addressed the graduating class and spoke with feeling of their approaching separation. They had now been shaving together for over four weeks, and no doubt it seemed hard to part. Lasting ties had been formed, he hoped, during their college course which would endure through life. They would go out, he said, from the academy where they had received their training and be appointed, he did not doubt, to chairs of their own. He liked to think that the college had turned out some of the most eminent men of their profession.
A leading shampooist had said to him only the other day that without his college training he would never be where he was. The president regretted that Dean Follicle, who was to give the commencement address, was delayed a little in arriving, as he was detained below with a customer in the chair, as was also the senior professor of Capillary Science.
The president took occasion to say that he saw before him not only the graduating class and the juniors and the sophomores, but also the freshmen, who were still in their first week. He was aware that to these young men with still more than three weeks in front of them, the course looked long and arduous. But he would remind them that in years to come they would look back to their four weeks at their Alma Mater as the happiest days of their lives.
