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The Listener's Column

The Listener's Column image
Parent Issue
Day
18
Month
June
Year
1897
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

The annual heigira to Kurope has begun and the cattle boats are taxed to their utmost capaeity. Willie Wimp kins the three hundred dollar a year tutor is packing his steamer trunk and buying hiraself a suit.of blue jeans and a cut rate ticket to Liverpool, Havre or Hamburg. The great question is, how can a man earning three hundred dollars a jear aft'ord to spend every summer in Jiurope ? Of course he goes to "study" but how can he alïord it. It cannot be that he leaves behind unpaid meát and grocery bilis. Xo, the tutor would not do that. Abov all he is au honorable man, they are all honorable nii-n, but how in the world does he do it y Then again, the question might be asked. VVliy does heiloity Of eourse he will answer, To study, but tliat excuse is so yery flat tb aoyone who knows anything about it that'it is useless to make it. The whole thing is tommyrot and why people who are sensible take any stock in the man who goes abroad lor two inonths and a half and comes back with a doctors degree under his arm is more thau I. for one, can understand. I happen to be slightly acquainted with thedoings of Ameri can studenls in Europe and to a certaii extent know whereof I speak when l say that these students are in the ma jority of cases frauds. They accomp lish nothing. They donotdoas good work as oould be done here. They ge' a doctor's degree but such a thing is merely a bit oí' merchandise in der many. You can buy it for flfty dollars as here one buys a bicycle. The grea: thing is, that a handlè to ones name such as every European charlatan pos sesses is a thing oí valué over hert among us where culturéis below pre mium; that is, that kind of culture. So Willie Wimpkins, the tutor goes to Europe jus; a pi n fellow and comes back a ri' ■: r ol philos phy. He doesn't kr.ow a on his retu ■■■! than on th' ■ ft hut he has the degree aw . ffixed 'o his signature, wil] I ■■ ■ ■■! an ar ic!e on the "Whichnessof the kV'he efore'accepted in an American magazine. He goes to Europe on a cattle sliip w 'lli a kodak camera and comes back with a bushei basket oí snap shots, ever after posing in a community like this as an art cntie. He also fakes with him a ten dollar bilí and a shirt but he doesn't change either one ot' them while abroad. While f aï awayfrom hisnative heath he is a tramp pure and simple, or impure and complex as you choose but when he strikes tlie country ou liis return he immediately buys a new suit, changes his shirt and shoes and rides into town in a parlor car using his last dollar to pay for a dinner ;n the buffet and give the impression that lie travels in a cunarder tirst class. The tact of the matter is he does nothing first class from the time he leaves Ann Arbor until he gets otï the cattle sliip coming back. lie can't for he is second or third class himself. In Germany he attends half a dozen lectures in the hospital or dabbles in experimental psychology, soaks up all the hof brau he can squeeze into a litre measure and then comes home with advanced ideas on the oivilization of Europe But that degree is the candlethat the voyage was worth. That degree will bring him in mueh fa'me- maybe. It will also give him the permission to cut his bei rd after the style affected by William Shakespeare without being sneered at by his students. When he does this he will hang Shakespeare's portrait above hlm in the class room tbat all who look may stand aghast at the marvelous resemblance and kneel at the feet of the tutor who up to the European trip had never travelled i'urther east than Ypsilanti or west, than Chicago. II ow humorous the college tutor is. "He builds better than he knows. It is vell. for if he were to understand how much amusement he aft'ords some peopie he would discontinue his characteristic operations and pobsibly be a man with a few manly attributes. He might puy his bilis before going to Europe to earn a doctors degree. He might smile once in a while when one makes a funny remark in his societv. Come down off your pedestal, oh, ye tutor. Here, in Ann Arbor. you are a mighty man but go out into thé country among other people who walk on twi feet as you do and ask them what they think of you. You will be surprised at what they teil you. The great trouble with the tutor is that his head is too large for his body. A salary of three hundred dollars a year for teaching the young idea how to shoot puts him in "the clouds and keeps him there, at least until someone knocks the pedestal from beneath him and shows him that it is better to stand on tena firma and ones own merits than on the air and an assumed super iority. I am sincerely sorry, that 1 aul liourget did not meet a college tutor or assistant professor in the course of his American travels.

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Subjects
Old News
Ann Arbor Democrat