If he has in him any ability beyond
that of the common herd, his tutor, interested in his studies, will
smoke at him until he kindles him into a flame. For the tutor's soul
is not harassed by herding dull students, with dismissal hanging by a
thread over his head in the class room. The American professor has no
time to be interested in a clever student. He has time to be
interested in his "deportment," his letter-writing, his executive
work, and his organising ability and his hope of promotion to a soap
factory. But with that his mind is exhausted. The student of genius
merely means to him a student who gives no trouble, who passes all
his "tests," and is present at all his "recitations." Such a student
also, if he can be trained to be a hustler and an advertiser, will
undoubtedly "make good." But beyond that the professor does not think
of him. The everlasting principle of equality has inserted itself in
a place where it has no right to be, and where inequality is the
breath of life.
American or Canadian college trustees would be horrified at the
notion of professors who apparently do no work, give few or no
lectures and draw their pay merely for existing. Yet these are
really the only kind of professors worth having,--I mean, men who
can be trusted with a vague general mission in life,
with a salary guaranteed at least till their death, and a sphere
of duties entrusted solely to their own consciences and the promptings
of their own desires.
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