ectures, got nothing. Professor Peterkin taught nothing, but he
represented University Extension. Plain Mr. Barton did the work and
represented nothing. Both reached society. Neither reached the masses.
In my native town plain Mr. Barton's supplementary lectures, which were
simply an effort to unravel the Peterkin complications, were attended by
the same people in smaller crowds--people of social standing who were
curious enough to devote an hour a week to an endeavor to find out the
meaning of what Professor Peterkin had told them at the function the
week before. The students examined were mostly ladies, and I happen to
know that in a large proportion they were ladies whose husbands could
have afforded to pay Professor Peterkin his salary ten times over as a
private tutor."

"As I look at it," said Mr. Pedagog, gravely, "it does not make much
difference to whom your instruction is given, so long as it instructs.
What if these lectures do interest those who are comparatively well
off? Your society woman may be as much in need of an extended education
as your factory girl. The University Extension idea is to convey
knowledge to people who would not otherwise get it. It simply sets out
to improve minds. If the social mind needs improvement, why not improve
it? Why condemn a system because it does not discriminate in the minds
selected for improvement?"

"I don't condemn a system which sets out to improve minds irrespective
of conditions," replied the Idiot. "But I should most assuredly condemn
a man, or a set of men, who induced me to subscribe to a bread fund for
the poor and who afterwards expended that money on cream-cakes for the
Czar of Russia. The fact that the Czar of Russia wanted the cream-cakes
and was willing to accept them would not affect my feelings in the
matter, though I have no doubt the people in charge of the fund would
find themselves far more conspicuous for having departed from the
original idea. Some of them might be knighted for it if the Czar
happened to be passionately fond of cream-cakes."

"Then, having attacked this system, what would you have? Would you have
University Extension stop?" asked the Bibliomaniac.

"Not at all," returned the Idiot. "Anything which can educate society is
a good thing, but I should change the name of it from University
Extension to Social Expansion, and I should compel those whose minds
were broadened by it to pay the bills."

"But as yet you have failed to hit