aratory schooling. At the law school I was at an
obvious disadvantage with the men from the smaller colleges which still
followed the old-fashioned curriculum and insisted on the mental
discipline entailed by advanced Greek, Latin, the higher mathematics,
science and biology.

In point of fact I loafed delightfully for four years and let my mind
run absolutely to seed, while I smoked pipe after pipe under the
elms, watching the squirrels and dreaming dreams. I selected
elementary--almost childlike--courses in a large variety of subjects;
and as soon as I had progressed sufficiently to find them difficult I
cast about for other snaps to take their places. My bookcase exhibited a
collection of primers on botany, zooelogy and geology, the fine arts,
music, elementary French and German, philosophy, ethics, methaphysics,
architecture, English composition, Shakspere, the English poets and
novelists, oral debating and modern history.

I took nothing that was not easy and about which I did not already know
a little something. I attended the minimum number of lectures required,
did the smallest amount of reading possible and, by cramming vigorously
for three weeks at the end of the year, managed to pass all examinations
creditably. I averaged, I suppose, outside of the lecture room, about a
single hour's desultory work a day. I really need not have done that.

When, for example, it came time to take the examination in French
composition I discovered that I had read but two out of the fifteen
plays and novels required, the plots of any one of which I might be
asked to give on my paper. Rather than read these various volumes, I
prepared a skeleton digest in French, sufficiently vague, which could by
slight transpositions be made to do service in every case. I committed
it to memory. It ran somewhat as follows:

"The play"--or novel--"entitled ---- is generally conceded to be one of
the most carefully constructed and artistically developed of
all ----'s"--here insert name of author--"many masterly productions. The
genius of the author has enabled him skilfully to portray the atmosphere
and characters of the period. The scene is laid in ---- and the time
roughly is that of the --th century. The hero is ----; the heroine, ----;
and after numerous obstacles and ingenious complications they eventually
marry. The character of the old ----"--here insert father, mother, uncle
or grandparent, gardener or family servant--"is delightfully