Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich
fifteen hundred dollars. 

 But the change both of name and of character from Concordia College to Plutoria University was the work of President Boomer. He had changed it from an old-fashioned college of the by-gone type to a university in the true modern sense. At Plutoria they now taught everything. Concordia College, for example, had no teaching of religion except lectures on the Bible. Now they had lectures also on Confucianism, Mohammedanism Buddhism, with an optional course on atheism for students in the final year. 

 And, of course, they had long since admitted women, and there were now beautiful creatures with Cleo de Merode hair studying astronomy at oaken desks and looking up at the teacher with eyes like comets. The university taught everything and did everything. It had whirling machines on the top of it that measured the speed of the wind, and deep in its basements it measured earthquakes with a seismograph; it held classes on forestry and dentistry and palmistry; it sent life classes into the slums, and death classes to the city morgue. It offered such a vast variety of themes, topics and subjects to the students, that there was nothing that a student was compelled to learn, while from its own presses in its own press-building it sent out a shower of bulletins and monographs like driven snow from a rotary plough. 

 In fact, it had become, as President Boomer told all the businessmen in town, not merely a university, but a universitas in the true sense, and every one of its faculties was now a facultas in the real acceptance of the word, and its studies properly and truly studia; indeed, if the businessmen would only build a few more dormitories and put up enough money to form an adequate fondatum or fundum, then the good work might be looked upon as complete. 

 As the three walked up the elm avenue there met them a little stream of students with college books, and female students with winged-victory hats, and professors with last year's overcoats. And some went past with a smile and others with a shiver. 

 "That's Professor Withers," said the president in a sympathetic voice as one of the shivering figures went past; "poor Withers," and he sighed. 

 "What's wrong with him?" said the Wizard; "is he sick?" 

 "No, not sick," said the president quietly and sadly, "merely inefficient." 

 "Inefficient?" 


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