Page:The plastic age, (IA plasticage00mark).pdf/335

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.
THE PLASTIC AGE
309

lope for the skimmed milk. Perhaps it is n’t wise or me to give public expression to my pessimism, )ut you ought to be old enough to stand it.

uThe average college graduate is a pretty poor ipecimen, but all in all he is just about the best we lave. Please remember that I am talking in averiges. I know perfectly well that a great many jrilliant men do not come to college and that a jreat many stupid men do come, but the colleges jet a very fair percentage of the intelligent ones tnd a comparatively small percentage of the stupid mes. In other words, to play with my mixed netaphor a bit, the cream is very thin in places and he skimmed milk has some very thick clots of ream, but in the end the cream remains the cream md the milk the milk. Everything taken into conideration, we get in the colleges the young men nth the highest ideals, the loftiest purpose.

“You want to tell me that those ideals are low nd the purpose materialistic and selfish. I know t, but the average college graduate, I repeat, has oftier ideals and is less materialistic than the aver¬ se man who has not gone to college. I wish that could believe that the college gives him those deals. I can’t, however. The colleges draw the test that society has to offer; therefore, they gradtate the best.”

“Oh, I don’t know,”

a

student

How about Edison and Ford and

interrupted.