when I came here. I've been coarsened and cheapened; all
of us have. I take things for granted that shocked me horribly once. I
know that they ought to shock me now, but they don't. I've made some
friends and I've had a wonderful time, but I certainly don't feel that I
have got any other value out of college."

Winsor could not sit still and talk. He filled his pipe viciously,
lighted it, and then jumped up and leaned against the mantel. "I admit
everything that's been said, but I don't believe that it is altogether
our fault." He was intensely in earnest, and so were his listeners.
"Look at the faculty. When I came here I thought that they were all wise
men because they were On the faculty. Well, I've found out otherwise.
Some of them know a lot and can't teach, a few of them know a lot and
can teach, some of them know a little and can't teach, and some of them
don't know anything and can't explain c-a-t. Why, look at Kempton. That
freshman, Larson, showed me a theme the other day that Kempton had
corrected. It was full of errors that weren't marked, and it was nothing
in the world but drip. Even Larson knew that, but he's the foxy kid; he
wrote the theme about Kempton. All right--Kempton gives him a B and
tells him that it is very amusing. Hell of a lot Larson's learning. Look
at Kane in math. I had him when I was a freshman."

"Me, too," Hugh chimed in.

"'Nough said, then. Math's dry enough, God knows, but Kane makes it
dryer. He's a born desiccator. He could make 'Hamlet' as dry as
calculus."

"Right-o," said Pudge. "But Mitchell could make calculus as exciting as
'Hamlet.' It's fifty-fifty."

"And they fired Mitchell." Jack Lawrence spoke for the first time. "I
have that straight. The administration seems afraid of a man that can
teach. They've made Buchanan a full professor, and there isn't a man in
college who can tell what he's talking about. He's written a couple of
books that nobody reads, and that makes him a scholar. I was forced to
take three courses with him. They were agony, and he never taught me a
damn thing."

"Most of them don't teach you a damn thing," Winsor exclaimed, tapping
his pipe on the mantel. "They either tell you something that you can
find more easily in a book, or just confuse you with a lot of ponderous
lectures that put you to sleep or drive you crazy if you try to
understand them."

"There are just about a dozen men in this college worth listening to,"
Hugh put in, "and I've