Topic 54 
ON COLLEGE LIFE

THE two classes of college boys who get the least out of college life are those who have no money and those who have too much.  Neither poverty nor great riches are desirable for the boy in college."

Colonel Roosevelt had asked my plans for my boy, and I had told him I meant to send him to Harvard "if I had the necessary funds."

" It does not," said he, " require very much money to send a boy through Harvard or for that matter Yale or any of the big schools.  The fact is that the boy who has too much money in college is just as badly off as the poor fellow who has none.  I have every sympathy with the boy who works his way through college, but I realize that the poor fellow who has to divide his time between work, classroom, and study does not begin to get all a man should get out of college.  He does not get the real spirit of the university, and he may come out with a mass of undigested knowledge, worn physically and mentally and a narrow man.  He'd have done as well in many cases working at some trade and devoting his spare time to a public library.

"On the other hand, the boy who has unlimited money has unlimited opportunities to spend it, to get into trouble and acquire habits that will be a handicap in later life.  With the aid of tutors he gets his degree, and leaves college just as the extremely poor boy without having gotten the real benefit of the college.  Both have been in but not of the college.

"Unlike either of these, the boy of moderate means, enough to permit him to take a real part in all college activities, but not enough to permit or induce extravagance, gets about everything there is to be had.  They are the men who really benefit by college.

"It does not hurt a boy to have to do some work — some of the best men I have known have had to do some work while in college —; but the fellow who has all work and no time for the lighter activities is unfortunate.  He would do better to delay his entrance until he could accumulate enough funds to make his stay in the school less of a constant drill.

"That, I know, is not quite so romantic, but it is eminently more practical.

"However, one can never tell how a university man will turn out or what a university will turn out.  Just now the two most eminent of the alumni of my college are Boies Penrose and Bill Barnes."