That same evening I wrote to the young man who had so fired my imagination, telling him what I had studied and asking what more it was necessary to know to get into college. He replied that I should write to the University for a catalogue, which would give me all the necessary information.

At this time catalogues listed the books that covered the ground for entrance requirements. As soon as possible I ordered every book mentioned in the requirements for admission to the classical course, paying for them in installments with the proceeds from my newspaper correspondence.

I knew nothing of the time required to prepare for college, but thought it could be done in a year. It looked to me as if Latin would take a longer time to complete than any of the other subjects, so I began to study it immediately. I planned to finish each of the four divisions — Beginning Latin, Cæsar, Cicero, and Vergil-in three months. At this time only four orations of Cicero and four books of Vergil were required. My studying had to be done after the day's work was over, on rainy days, and Sundays. Fortunately we did not work as many hours a day as most farmers did, which fact gave me considerable time for study after

supper.

I worked out a daily schedule for Latin, intending to put the remaining time on other subjects after finishing my daily stint of Latin. Accordingly I divided the Beginning Latin text into ninety equal parts, thinking that if I fell behind during the week I could catch up on Sundays. The text recommended, Harkness's Easy Method, was not difficult to understand. In fact many of the recent texts in Latin are not nearly so teachable as the old Harkness.

This text grouped the conjugations in a few pages in the middle of the

book. In my ignorance of a proper division of assignments, I gave the same number of pages to each, and all the conjugations were included in two assignments.

Never shall I forget the night I ran into them. After memorizing amo, amas, amat, I looked ahead and saw columns of similar words. I realized that if these were to be learned in two days I must devise some short cut. I had noticed that the present, imperfect, and future of the first conjugation were the same with the exception of the syllables ba in the imperfect and bi in the future. This gave me a hint and I spent the remainder of the evening in working out a scheme of comparisons between the same tenses of the four conjugations. In this way I managed to learn the two conjugations in the two evenings. Afterward, when teaching beginner's Latin, I used many of the methods that I devised in those two strenuous nights.

I completed the beginner's Latin within the assigned period and immediately began the study of Cæsar. Since I had planned to complete Cæsar in three months, and was sure that the translating would become easier as I went further in the text, I developed a plan of increasing the amount of reading weekly by a sort of arithmetical progression. The sum of one, two, three, four, and so forth, to and including thirteen, is ninety-one. Then, if I could read one ninety-first the first week, two ninety-firsts the second week, and so on, I could read all of Cæsar in the thirteen weeks. This gave me approximately thirty-two lines to read the first week and I was sure that could easily be done.

For the first time schedule was my shot to pieces. I spent three weeks of agonizing effort on the first chapter. The use of the perfect participle was my particular bête noire, and it seemed

as if each phrase contained a new construction. After mastering the first chapter, however, I had less difficulty and I did manage to read the four books of Cæsar within the prescribed three months.

Cicero was very easy and I translated the four orations against Catiline in less than two months. In fact I read the second oration one rainy afternoon. Vergil was more difficult, but I finished the four books in less than three months. I used successfully the same principle of gradual increases in the length of assignments for both Cicero and Vergil. I have since recommended this method to high-school teachers of Latin and many have told me that it was very satisfactory. In high-school work, however, I have divided the work by the nine months' period, making one forty-fifth the first month, two forty-fifths the second month, and so on. In the case of Cæsar this makes sixty lines the first month or about three lines a day.

I had heard or read somewhere that the study of Greek did not begin until Cæsar was completed; so I delayed the study of Greek until I had nearly finished Cæsar. The text I used had a three-page summary of the rules of accent, uses of proclitics, enclitics, and the like, before the first lesson proper began. Like some teachers, I assumed that the book was to be followed literally, and so I memorized these three pages of disconnected rules before taking up the other work. Greek was very easy for me and I had finished the third book of the Anabasis long before completing Vergil. I learned most of the Greek verbs while engaged in farm work, writing them on slips of paper at night and memorizing them during the day.

One of my chores was to feed sweet milk to the calves, then return to the house for sour milk to be given to the pigs. Sometimes my mother would reverse the procedure and give me the sour milk first. I would forget her injunction to feed the pigs first, and carry the sour milk to the calves, never realizing what I was doing until the calves with bunts of disapproval would spatter the milk over me and thus bring my mind out of the clouds. I fear that while cultivating corn many a hill was sacrificed on the altar of the Greek gods.

In all my Latin I found only one selection, a sentence in Cicero, that I could not translate. By a strange irony of fate this one sentence was included in my entrance examination in Latin.

Algebra I found easy. For geometry I used the famous Davies's Legendre, a text with no special exercises and all the 'Originals' in the back. After learning to demonstrate a theorem, I wrote it on a slip of paper. I reviewed by mixing these theorems, then drawing one at a time from the pile and demonstrating it. When I had completed the text I could demonstrate any theorem, regardless of the place where it occurred in the text. My entrance examination in geometry was perfect.

Teachers of geometry claim that memorizing it is not the proper method. Doubtless they are right, but I do know that I never had any difficulty in applying my algebra or geometry in higher mathematics. Whatever may be said of my method of learning, the results were satisfactory.

To history I paid little attention, for my repeated reading of the History of the World would, I hoped, cover the subject. English I was learning from my newspaper work and reading.

English. In this is given an amusing example of mixed metaphor that made such an impression on me that I doubt if I have ever been guilty of that fault. It is from a reputed speech of an Irish member of the English Parliament. 'Mr. Speaker, I smell a rat, I see him brewing in the air; but, mark me, I shall yet nip him in the bud.'

III

In eleven months from the time I began to prepare for college I had completed, so far as I could determine from the catalogue, all the requirements for admission to the University. It had meant night after night of study, often until the wee sma' hours of morning. It meant the loss of holidays, the Saturday afternoon trips to the village for our mail and groceries. It meant the sacrifice of everything else for this one objective. Yet I have never spent a more enjoyable year. The pleasure of this incessant study far more than compensated for the loss of other enjoyments. I had no objective beyond getting into college. I had no plans of what I should do after graduating, no idea of the financial benefit that might accrue, no notion of how it might change my life just to go to college, just to read Greek.

While I was studying, a relative visited us from a large city in the West in which was located the State University. She pictured to me the wonders of the West and the splendid opportunities I should have of earning my way through college in a large city.

This appealed to me, so I sent for the catalogue of the University, found the entrance requirements were practically the same as at Ann Arbor, and decided to go there. The question of finances, of how I was to get so far from home without money, of how I was to maintain myself while in college, did not

occur to me. I was too full of the immediate objective. However, when the time came to leave, my stepfather relented and gave me one hundred dollars.

In due time I reached the University, probably as green a candidate for admission to college as ever appeared on that campus. A small group of us were started on the entrance examinations. Many disappeared at different stages along the trail, but by good fortune I satisfied the examiners and continued to the end. Algebra and geometry I passed with almost perfect papers. In geometry I was asked to construct a triangle equal in area to a reëntrant polygon. Polygons I knew, but a reëntrant polygon was an unknown figure. I asked the examiner in charge what it was, telling him that I could make the construction if I knew the figure. Amused at my confidence, or because he was a human being even though an examiner, he defined the term for me and I made the construction correctly.

With Latin I had no difficulty, except the one sentence in Cicero. Greek was easy, although the kindly old Greek professor afterward told me that he could n't read most of my Greek, but judged from the length of my answers that I knew something about it.

After entering college my real troubles began. I was thrown into an entirely new environment. Torn from the peaceful countryside and easygoing methods of the country school, I was plunged into the hurly-burly life of the city and the highly organized and complicated routine of a university. I was tossed hither and yon like a leaf on the tempestuous mountain torrent. No one was interested in my troubles, nowhere was there sympathy or mercy for my blunders. Fortunately I joined a coöperative boarding-club and ulti

mately found myself through the aid of some of the older members. I soon procured work and in the spring I had more money than I possessed when entering the University.

In my college work I was fully up to the average of my classmates. My English was apparently as satisfactory as that of a freshman is ever expected to be. My work in mathematics was somewhat better; in Greek I did unusually well. Only in Latin did I have any real difficulty.

My Latin instructor was of the type not yet a rara avis in the college world -one that ought to be annihilated before being permitted to wreck the hopes and enthusiasm of the beginning college student. His mind moved in a rut; his point of view was confined between the walls of conventionality and regularity. Anything out of the normal threw his mental reactions out of gear. When he learned that I had worked out my Latin without a teacher and in less than the usual time, instead of giving me some credit for it, he assumed that I was a pariah so far as Latin was concerned and proceeded to make my life a burden. The fact that afterward I did high-grade work under another Latin instructor satisfies me that I was only partly to blame for my troubles.

The old Roman long ago crossed the Great Divide. Pax cineribus.

What I accomplished in eleven months may seem impossible to those who have spent four years in covering the same ground. But one must remember that I lost no time in vacations, during which I would forget much of what I had learned in the

preceding nine months. Doubtless I spent as many hours in actual and intensive study during those eleven months as most high-school pupils spend in four years.

When I sum up the results of a highschool course, I am sure that our present system is wasteful both in the methods of instruction and in the allotment of time.

Do pupils need thirteen weeks of vacation? Do they need four years to prepare to enter college? If the latter is true, have they learned how to study? Are all the contents of the courses essential? Are the methods of instruction wasteful of time? I did what any normal boy or girl can do. In college I found that I learned no more easily than the majority of my classmates.

The only remarkable thing in this chronicle is the obsession I had to go to college. I am certain that any modern college man will say that my desire to enter college in order to study Greek was clear evidence of lunacy.

To the boy or girl who cannot, for financial or other reasons, attend a high school, let me say that it is within your power to go to college. The opportunities of evening schools and of correspondence instruction will make your path easy. When you once decide on a college education, those obstacles that loom large ahead of you will disappear as you approach them. Not even the inquisitions of the modern entrance examination boards, with their intelligence tests and various other devices to trap the unwary, need frighten you.

I AM a doctor by profession; and my brother is a great violinist. There is, of course, first Kreisler; then a long way off there are five others I refrain from giving their names; but my brother is one of the five. Sometimes I think he plays better than they do. You can imagine I have listened to them with some attention, for if my profession is medicine my hobby is the violin! Sometimes he falls beneath them, for like all Viennese he is perhaps a shade too genial, too easy-going for the ruthlessness of Art; but I have heard him in his great moments shoot beyond them - spring like a star from world to world, where no one could follow him.

My brother is not married; my sister and I consider the subject often; but with the American market out of his power on account of the exchange, it is impossible to count upon sufficient for a good marriage. He has a great deal of temperament and my sister thinks a wife would demand of him more than she would be at all likely to get. Also, if there were to be a family, he could no longer take his summer holidays in the mountains or follow the cures I often consider necessary. Nor could he afford to do the kind actions he often does for others.

I say this much about him that you may understand what follows. First, that his opinion as to his art is considered final in Vienna (he smells out a good pupil from the Prater to the Hofburg); and second, that you may realize that as well as being a good judge

of violin-playing my brother Ernst is a man of heart and principle. I have never known him to do a mean action. His temper is good, with raw streaks in it such as are common to all artists. An artist has not the padding for the nerves that the rest of us have; it is worn off him in the practice of his art and in the perpetual excitation of his emotions. If a man is to sweep you off your feet, he must have something to sweep with, must he not? And he cannot always keep this something neatly packed up in a box to be opened only on occasions when it gives us pleasure.

Twice a year Ernst plays at Linz; it is a good town for music. It lies flat by the yellow Danube, with a fine pink Kloster on a hill above it.

On this occasion, as usual, I accompanied my brother from Vienna. He played before a full and enthusiastic audience. I should not have had a seat but for the kindness of a critic, who gave up his seat to me when he discovered who I was; so that I sat in the second row, and could observe Ernst as easily as I could hear him. It was a Beethoven evening. I say no more. It would not become me to say that my brother is worthy of Beethoven, but I must confess it occurred to me several times in the course of the evening to hope that his immortal spirit – cured of its deafness may have been hovering above the platform. The accompanist, a young Russian with fire in his fingers, was almost fit to play with Ernst. Fortunately he was