"about her college work. She
seems to be studying a queer lot of stuff--Social Endeavour and all
that!"

"Awful piffle," said the young man. "But the girls naturally run to all
that sort of rot, you know."

"Now, your work," I went on, "is no doubt very different. I mean what
you were taking before the war came along. I suppose you fellows have
an awful dose of mathematics and philology and so on just as I did in my
college days?"

Something like a blush came across the face of the handsome youth.

"Well, no," he said, "I didn't co-opt mathematics. At our college, you
know, we co-opt two majors and two minors."

"I see," I said, "and what were you co-opting?"

"I co-opted Turkish, Music, and Religion," he answered.

"Oh, yes," I said with a sort of reverential respect, "fitting yourself
for a position of choir-master in a Turkish cathedral, no doubt."

"No, no," he said, "I'm going into insurance; but, you see, those
subjects fitted in better than anything else."

"Fitted in?"

"Yes. Turkish comes at nine, music at ten and religion at eleven. So
they make a good combination; they leave a man free to--"

"To develop his mind," I said. "We used to find in my college days that
lectures interfered with it badly. But now, Turkish, that must be an
interesting language, eh?"

"Search me!" said the student. "All you have to do is answer the roll
and go out. Forty roll-calls give you one Turkish unit--but, say, I must
get on, I've got to change. So long."

I could not help reflecting, as the young man left me, on the great
changes that have come over our college education. It was a relief to
me later in the day to talk with a quiet, sombre man, himself a graduate
student in philosophy, on this topic. He agreed with me that the old
strenuous studies seem to be very largely abandoned.

I looked at the sombre man with respect.

"Now your work," I said, "is very different from what these young people
are doing--hard, solid, definite effort. What a relief it must be to you
to get a brief vacation up here. I couldn't help thinking to-day, as I
watched you moving round doing nothing, how fine it must feel for you
to come up here after your hard work and put in a month of out-and-out
loafing."

"Loafing!" he said indignantly. "I'm not loafing. I'm putting in a half
summer course in Introspection. That's why I'm here. I get credit for
two majors for my time here."

"Ah," I said, as gently as I could, "you get credi