Perspective

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Title:     Perspective
Author: Francis B. Pearson [More Titles by Pearson]

I wish I could ever get the question of majors and minors settled to my complete satisfaction. I thought my college course would settle the matter for all time, but it didn't. I suspect that those erudite professors thought they were getting me fitted out with enduring habits of majors and minors, but they seem to have made no allowance for changes of styles nor for growth. When I received my diploma they seemed to think I was finished, and would stay just as they had fixed me. They used to talk no little about finished products, and, on commencement day, appeared to look upon me as one of them. On the whole, I'm glad that I didn't fulfil their apparent expectations. I have never been able to make out whether their attentions, on commencement day, were manifestations of pride or relief. I can see now that I must have been a sore trial to them. In my callow days, when they occupied pedestals, I bent the knee to them by way of propitiating them, but I got bravely over that. At first, what they taught and what they represented were my majors, but when I came to shift and reconstruct values, some of them climbed down off their pedestals, and my knee lost some of its flexibility.

We had one little professor who afforded us no end of amusement by his taking himself so seriously. The boys used to say that he wrote letters and sent flowers to himself. He would strut about the campus as proudly as a pouter-pigeon, never realizing, apparently, that we were laughing at him. At first, he impressed us greatly with his grand air and his clothes, but after we discovered that, in his case at least, clothes do not make the man, we refused to be impressed. He could split hairs with infinite precision, and smoke a cigarette in the most approved style, but I never heard any of the boys express a wish to become that sort of man. Had there occurred a meeting, on the campus, between him and Zeus he would have been offended, I am sure, if Zeus had failed to set off a few thunderbolts in his honor. We used to have at home a bantam rooster that could create no end of flutter in the chicken yard, and could crow mightily; but when I reflected that he could neither lay eggs nor occupy much space in a frying-pan, I demoted him, in my thinking, from major rank to a low minor, and awarded the palm to one of the less bumptious but more useful fowls. Our little professor had degrees, of course, and has them yet, I suspect; but no one ever discovered that he put them to any good use. For that reason we boys lost interest in the man as well as his garnishments.

Our professor of chemistry was different. He was never on dress-parade; he did not pose; he was no snob. We loved him because he was so genuine. He had degrees, too, but they were so obscured by the man that we forgot them in our contemplation of him. We knew that they do not make degrees big enough for him. I often wonder what degrees the colleges would want to confer upon William Shakespeare if he could come back. Then, too, I often think what a wonderful letter Abraham Lincoln could and might have written to Mrs. Bixby, if he had only had a degree. Agassiz may have had degrees, but he didn't really need them. Like Browning, he was big enough, even lacking degrees, to be known without the identification of his other names. If people need degrees they ought to have them, especially if they can live up to them. Possibly the time may come when degrees will be given for things done, rather than for things hoped for; given for at least one stage of the journey accomplished rather than for merely packing a travelling-bag. If this time ever comes Thomas A. Edison will bankrupt the alphabet.

In this coil of degrees and the absence of them, I become more and more confused as to majors and minors. There in college were those two professors both wearing degrees of the same size. Judged by that criterion they should have been of equal size and influence. But they weren't. In the one case you couldn't see the man for the degree; in the other you couldn't see the degree for the man. Small wonder that I find myself in such a hopeless muddle. I once thought, in my innocence, that there was a sort of metric scale in degrees--that an A.M. was ten times the size of an A.B.; that a Ph.D. was equal to ten A.M.'s; and that the LL.D. degree could be had only on the top of Mt. Olympus. But here I am, stumbling about among folks, and can't tell a Ph.D. from an A.B. I do wish all these degree chaps would wear tags so that we wayfaring folks could tell them apart. It would simplify matters if the railway people would arrange compartments on their trains for these various degrees. The Ph.D. crowd would certainly feel more comfortable if they could herd together, so that they need not demean themselves by associating with mere A.M.'s or the more lowly A.B.'s. We might hope, too, that by way of diversion they would put their heads together and compound some prescription by the use of which the world might avert war, reduce the high cost of living, banish a woman's tears, or save a soul from perdition.

Be it said to my shame, that I do not know what even an A.B. means, much less the other degree hieroglyphics. Sometimes I receive a letter having the writer's name printed at the top with an A.B. annex; but I do not know what the writer is trying to say to me by means of the printing. He probably wants me to know that he is a graduate of some sort, but he fails to make it clear to me whether his degree was conferred by a high school, a normal school, a college, or a university. I know of one high school that confers this degree, as well as many normal schools and colleges. There are still other institutions where this same degree may be had, that freely admit that they are colleges, whether they can prove it or not. I'll be glad to send a stamped envelope for reply, if some one will only be good enough to tell me what A.B. does really mean.

I do hope that the earth may never be scourged with celibacy, but the ever-increasing variety of bachelors, male and female, creates in me a feeling of apprehension. Nor can I make out whether a bachelor of arts is bigger and better than bachelors of science and pedagogy. The arts folks claim that they are, and proceed to prove it by one another. I often wonder what a bachelor of arts can do that the other bachelors cannot do, or vice versa. They should all be required to submit a list of their accomplishments, so that, when any of the rest of us want a bit of work done, we may be able to select wisely from among these differentiated bachelors. If we want a bridge built, a beefsteak broiled, a mountain tunnelled, a loaf of bread baked, a railroad constructed, a hat trimmed, or a book written, we ought to know which class of bachelors will serve our purpose best. Some one asked me just a few days ago to cite him to some man or woman who can write a prize-winning short story, but I couldn't decide whether to refer him to the bachelors of arts or the bachelors of pedagogy. I might have turned to the Litt.D.'s, but I didn't suppose they would care to bother with a little thing like that.

In college I studied Greek and, in fact, won a gold medal for my agility in ramping through Mr. Xenophon's parasangs. That medal is lost, so far as I know, and no one now has the remotest suspicion that I ever even halted along through those parasangs, not to mention ramping, or that I ever made the acquaintance of ox-eyed Juno. But I need no medal to remind roe of those experiences in the Greek class. Every bluebird I see does that for me. The good old doctor, one morning in early spring, rhapsodized for five minutes on the singing of a bluebird he had heard on his way to class, telling how the little fellow was pouring forth a melody that made the world and all life seem more beautiful and blessed. We loved him for that, because it proved that he was a big-souled human being; and pupils like to discover human qualities in their teachers. The little professor may have heard the bluebird's singing, too; but if he did, he probably thought it was serenading him. If colleges of education and normal schools would select teachers who can delight in the song of a bluebird their academic attainments would be ennobled and glorified, and their students might come to love instead of fearing them. Only a man or a woman with a big soul can socialize and vitalize the work of the schools. The mere academician can never do it.

The more I think of all these degree decorations in my efforts to determine what is major in life and what is minor, the more I think of George. He was an earnest schoolmaster, and was happiest when his boys and girls were around him, busy at their tasks. One year there were fourteen boys in his school, fifteen including himself, for he was one of them. The school day was not long enough, so they met in groups in the evening, at the various homes, and continued the work of the day. These boys absorbed his time, his strength, and his heart. Their success in their work was his greatest joy. Of those fourteen boys one is no more. Of the other thirteen one is a state official of high rank, five are attorneys, two are ministers of the Gospel, two are bankers, one is a successful business man, and two are engineers of prominence. George is the ideal of those men. They all say he gave them their start in the right direction, and always speak his name with reverence. George has these thirteen stars in his crown that I know of. He had no degrees, but I am thinking that some time he will hear the plaudit: "Well done, good and faithful servant."

[The end]
Francis B. Pearson's essay: Perspective

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