I am told that American professors are "mourning the lack of ideals"
at Columbia University—possibly also at other universities scattered
through the United States. If it be any consolation to these
mourning American professors, I can assure them that they do not
mourn alone. I live not far from Oxford, and enjoy the advantage of
occasionally listening to the jeremiads of English University
professors. More than once a German professor has done me the honour
to employ me as an object on which to sharpen his English. He also
has mourned similar lack of ideals at Heidelberg, at Bonn. Youth is
youth all the world over; it has its own ideals; they are not those
of the University professor. The explanation is tolerably simple.
Youth is young, and the University professor, generally speaking, is
middle-aged.

   I can sympathise with the mourning professor. I, in my time, have
suffered like despair. I remember the day so well; it was my twelfth
birthday. I recall the unholy joy with which I reflected that for
the future my unfortunate parents would be called upon to pay for me
full railway fare; it marked a decided step towards manhood. I was
now in my teens. That very afternoon there came to visit us a
relative of ours. She brought with her three small children:  a
girl, aged six; a precious, golden-haired thing in a lace collar that
called itself a boy, aged five; and a third still smaller creature,
it might have been male, it might have been female; I could not have
told you at the time, I cannot tell you now. This collection of
atoms was handed over to me.

   "Now, show yourself a man," said my dear mother, "remember you are in
your teens. Take them out for a walk and amuse them; and mind
nothing happens to them."

   To the children themselves their own mother gave instructions that
they were to do everything that I told them, and not to tear their
clothes or make themselves untidy. These directions, even to myself,
at the time, appeared contradictory. But I said nothing. And out
into the wilds the four of us departed.

   I was an only child. My own infancy had passed from my memory. To
me, at twelve, the ideas of six were as incomprehensible as are those
of twenty to the University professor of forty. I wanted to be a

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