gaged, Mary was through college, but John had one more
year to go in engineering school.

How the preparation for life does lengthen itself out!

When Judge Story was professor at Harvard in the thirties of the last
century, he put the law into his pupils' heads in eighteen months. The
present professors require three years.

In 1870 the Harvard Medical School made you attend classes for four
months in each of three years. It now makes you do it for nine months
in each of four years.

As for engineering, the University of Wisconsin gave John a chill by
informing him in its catalogue that "it is coming to be generally
recognized that a four-year technical course following the high-school
course is not an adequate preparation for those who are to fill
important positions; and the University would urge all those who can
afford the time to extend their studies over a period of five or six
years."

John compromised on five. This gave him a few Business courses in the
College of Commerce in addition to his regular Technique courses in
the College of Engineering. He was now a Bachelor of Science.

He thereupon became an apprentice in the shops of one of the two
biggest electrical firms in the United States. He inspected the
assembling of machines before they were shipped, and he overheard
wisdom from foremen and superintendents. His salary was fifteen cents
an hour. Since he worked about ten hours a day, his total income was
about forty dollars a month. At the end of the year he was raised to
fifty. This was the normal raise for a Bachelor of Science.

The graduates of Yale and Harvard in the bright colonial days of those
institutions married almost immediately on graduation. John didn't. He
didn't get married so early nor become a widower so often. He didn't
carry so many children to the christening font nor so many to the
cemetery.

Look at the dark as well as the bright side of colonial days.

Pick out any of the early Harvard classes. Honestly and truly at
random, run your finger down the column and pick any class. The class
of 1671!

It had eleven graduates. One of them remained a bachelor. Don't be too
severe on him. He died at twenty-four. Of the remaining ten, four were
married twice and two were married three times. For ten husbands,
therefore, there were eighteen wives.

Mr. G. Stanley Hall, President of Clark University, very competently
remarks: "The problem of superfluous women did not exist in those