It happened to me once to "assist" at the celebration of Class-Day at Harvard University. Class-Day is the peculiar institution of the Senior Class, and marks its completion of College study and lease from College rules.
Harvard has set up her Lares and Penates in a fine old grove, or a fine old grove and green have sprouted up around her, as the case may be,--most probably the latter, if one may judge from the appearance of the buildings which constitute the homes of the students, and which seem to have been built, and to be now sustained, without the remotest reference to taste or influence, but solely to furnish shelter,--angular, formal, stiff, windowy, bricky, and worse within than without. Why, I pray to know, as the first inquiry suggested by Class-Day, why is it that a boys' school should be placed beyond the pale of civilization? Do boys take so naturally to the amenities of life, that they can safely dispense with the conditions of amenity? Have boys so strong a predisposition to grace, that society can afford to take them away from home and its influences, and turn them loose with dozens of other boys into a bare and battered boarding-house, with its woodwork dingy, unpainted, gashed, scratched; windows dingy and dim; walls dingy and gray and smoked; everything narrow and rickety, unhomelike and unattractive?
America boasts of having the finest educational system in the world. Harvard is, if not the most distinguished, certainly among the first institutions in the country; but it is necessary only to stand upon the threshold of the first Harvard house which I entered, to pass through its mean entry and climb up its uncouth staircase, to be assured that our educational system has not yet found its key-stone. It has all the necessary materials, but it is incomplete. At its base it is falling every day more and more into shape and symmetry, but towards the top it is still only a pile of pebbles and boulders, and no arch. We have Primary Schools, Grammar Schools, High Schools, in which, first, boys and girls are educated together, as it seems impossible not to believe that God meant them to be; in which, secondly, home life and school life come together, and correct each other; in which, thirdly, comfortable and comely arrangements throughout minister to self-respect. But the moment you rise as high as a college, nature is violated. First, boys go off by themselves to their own destruction; secondly, home influences withdrawn; and, thirdly,--at Harvard, which the only college I ever visited,--the thorough comeliness which is found in the lower grades of schools does not appeal. The separation of boys and girls in school is a subject which has much talked about, but has not yet come to its adequate discussion. But the achievements of the past are the surest guaranties of the future. When we remember that, sixty years ago, the lowest district public schools were open to boys only, and that since that time girls have flocked into every grade of school below a college, it is difficult to believe that college doors will forever stand closed to them. _I_ believe that the time will come when any system framed for boys alone or for girls alone will be looked upon in the same light in which we now regard a monastery or a nunnery. Precisely the same course will not be prescribed to both sexes, but they will be associated in their education to the inestimable advantage of both.
This, however, I do not purpose now to discuss further.
Neither shall I speak of the second deficiency,--that of home influences,--any further than it is connected with the third, namely, a culpable neglect of circumstances which minister directly to character. I design to speak only of those evils which lie on the surface, patent to the most casual observer, and which may be removed without any change in the structure of society. And among the first of these I reckon the mean and meagre homes provided for the college students. If the State were poor, if the question were between mere rude shelter and no college education, we should do well to choose the former, and our choice would be our glory. It would be worthwhile even to live in such a house as Thoreau suggests, a tool-box with a few augur-holes bored in it to admit air, and a hook to hook down the lid at night. But we are not poor. Society has money enough to do everything it wishes to do; and it has provided no better homes for its young men because it has not come to the point of believing that better homes are necessary.
Sometimes it affects to maintain that this way of living is beneficial, and talks of the disciplinary power of soldiers' fare. It is true that a soldier, living on a crust of bread and lying on the ground for love of country or of duty, is ennobled by it; but it is also true, that a miser doing the same things for love of stocks and gold is degraded; and a dreamer doing it serenely unconscious is neither ennobled nor degraded, but is simply laying the foundation for dyspepsia.
To despise the elegances of life when they interfere with its duties the part of a hero. To be indifferent to them when they stand in the way of knowledge is the attribute of a philosopher. To disregard them when they would contribute to both character and culture is neither the one nor the other.
