than a tutorial position; he is one of a department corps that may become permanent and highly organized; he has a place in the academic sun.

This place must not be held at the expense of the graduate students who act as teaching fellows. They must not be allowed to undertake too much teaching nor to remain too long in the same position; their own study must always be going forward; they must look for their reward not to the meager pay which they receive, but to the chance for close association with older men and for practical training in teaching in their chosen field. They must be in the mood of the apprentice. Anyone who knows the leap into the abyss taken by the doctor of philosophy as he turns from his final examinations in June to the teaching of freshman composition in October will have a healthy appreciation of the worth of this apprenticeship.

At the bottom of the ladder come the readers. With them comes youth. Though they are the helots, the bearers of burdens, their backs are young and strong, their spirits unbroken, their hours of duty few. They, too, are apprentices preparing for newspaper work, for high school teaching, even for authorship, and gaining here in the workshop an insight into the demands and the standards of their trade. Like the teaching fellows, they are in direct and daily association with the professor. They visit his classes, they are occasionally relieved at their posts by him; they hold frequent conferences with him at which themes are read, the purposes and methods of the course discussed, the grades and comments checked. They are, in this University, a numerous, young, and eager lot; pathetically eager, it seems to the old-timers.

Like the feudal system, this scheme for the organization of freshman English begins at the top. In it the professor asks, "What shall I do to be saved?" when he should ask, "What shall I do to save the students?" But salvation, like other well considered virtues, begins

at home, and if the shepherd be saved, perhaps not all the flock will go astray. If I came to college a freshman, I would rather be taught by a four-thousand-dollar than by a six-hundred-dollar man. This touching faith in the relation between a man's salary and his ability is no doubt an illusion, but I cling to it. I have noticed that the western freshman comes to college, sometimes, of course, with a Stutz, but more often with an auroral keenness for a new wide world. Before him, as before Burns on his hillside, the curtain of existence is going up in many-colored splendor. I want the edges of that curtain to be lifted for him in his classes as well as in his fraternities, and I hold that there is a better chance for that illumination from a man who has lived and travelled a space in the world of thought than from one who is in pilgrimage just four years ahead of the new

comer.

Of course this auroral newcomer should understand that for him the spoon-fed days are over. If a career is open to his talents, he must run the race. A paternal university, through Subject A, may start him in a group with his kind and guide him down the path of needed rhetoric and grammar. But it will not post a doctor at every turn and a nurse at the end of the path. If he does not know a dangling participle when he meets one, he will be introduced, but he will not be given exercises and review exercises until he would know one in the dark. If he spells business b-u-i-s-n-e-s-s and tragedy t-r-a-d-e-g-y, as he does, he will not have to stay after school and write each word a hundred times on the board. He will find the crowded ways which he must walk charted rather than heavily guarded. He will find his professor, speaking millenially of course, no longer in the rôle of policeman, but rather of guide, philosopher, and friend.

Thus, in one of its channels at least, the democratic flood may bring on its strong current an ideal of aristodemocracy, the best serving the most.

AN ADVENTURER IN THE LITERATURE
OF SUCCESS

H. C. BROWN

Here is the story of a not uncommon type of college student, as I have seen him, in his quest for success. As a young American, he is susceptible to the popular ideal of wealth and fame. The man whose work may count for future generations but who has not yet entered the limelight is a kind of "dark horse" that has not yet arrived and does not concern him. He is not interested in "futures" of this sort and ranks such success with "high-brow" notions. He admires the leader who can "show the goods," and believes, as a citizen of a democratic community, that anyone can win the prize-or almost anyone. To meet this attitude, there has grown up a vast literature of Success Books, which from time to time creep into our university libraries. That they do not there remain idle, the loan cards will show.

This John Doe comes from a ranch or small town. He has no great cultivation, as a man of the world sees him, but his mind is active and he has had some practical experience of the vicissitudes of money-making labor. He may have had a good job and may even have hesitated about coming to college. There were plenty of men in his home town making good without a college education. Why should not he? However, he felt vaguely a certain limitation about the atmosphere of Milpitas, or wherever it was. His school histories have

emphasized the struggle for education of Lincoln and other popular heroes. Perhaps he learned to write by the copy-book "Knowledge is power." Some luminary has gone from his high school to the university and to fame. A friendly teacher has added his urge. But, above all, his democratic spirit rebels at the thought of possible college-bred competitors who may have some advantage he does not have.

He has not been untouched by magazine advertisements where fingers have pointed at him and headings have screamed: "You can double your income, improve your memory, learn to impress others," become a lawyer, accountant, engineer, administrator, doctor, or anything else, by the use of a few spare minutes a day and somebody's exceptional correspondence course. And there followed indorsements from successful men. But these were, after all, mere names. John has learned to suspect advertisements. The university can surely do a better job. It is hard to enter, it costs more, yet its ranks are always full-and without advertising. There must be something better there.

So we find John installed at the university, in the full glory of freshman experience. In his secret soul he is a little perturbed. To the man of some experience in life, there is something a little childish about the pranks of freshman hazing. But it is all in the game. He has heard about the benefits of college life and he might as well get into it with the others, for he wants all that is coming to him. Yet his first encounters with the curriculum have been unhappy. He has not been able to assimilate his courses to his background of knowledge. They are over his head. He cannot "stop" them. His fellow-students admire the good mixer, the college political boss, the athletes, the managers of student organizations. These are the real successes of college life. Who cares if they are not dear to their professors? Indeed, the faculty tend to be natural

enemies, who sometimes interrupt perfectly good careers with probations or even dismissals. Who ever hears of the real student, anyway, except to point him out as a poor grind?

While thus puzzled over the university scale of values, John meets a friend who has dipped into the success literature. So success can be taught! The lower division has taken him in hand to make a good citizen out of him. But, like every other American, he knows he can be a good citizen if he can only be a success. Why is there not a fourth section of the course, so that he may get his success learning with his culture? There may be something in the charge that university knowledge is fossilized knowledge. His friend tells him that the success books say nothing about the value of a college education. Most of them consider it a waste of time. He will look into the matter for himself.

For the first time the library becomes an interesting place. He begins "extra-curriculum" reading. One of the college periodicals has cited some statistics concerning the percentage of successful men with only a commonschool education, as compared with those who have graduated from high school and from college. He remembers that they showed an increasing percentage in favor of the high school and the college, and that there was a favorable correlation between grades and later achievement. It won't do, then, to abandon class work; it may hurt, but it is somehow for his good. On the side, however, he will read up on accounts of what successful men are like.

There may be a little bombast about the popular heroworshipers, but here is a study of successful administrators by a professor in a well-known school of commerce. Since the author is "professor," his work must bear the stamp of scientific approval. With growing surprise John finds the data wholly concerned with weight, height, number of children, and age of marriage. Reformers