第38章 DOES THE YOUNG MAN KNOW EVERYTHING WORTH KNOWING?

I am told that American professors are "mourning the lack of ideals"at Columbia University--possibly also at other universities scattered through the United States.If it be any consolation to these mourning American professors,I can assure them that they do not mourn alone.I live not far from Oxford,and enjoy the advantage of occasionally listening to the jeremiads of English University professors.More than once a German professor has done me the honour to employ me as an object on which to sharpen his English.He also has mourned similar lack of ideals at Heidelberg,at Bonn.Youth is youth all the world over;it has its own ideals;they are not those of the University professor.The explanation is tolerably simple.

Youth is young,and the University professor,generally speaking,is middle-aged.

I can sympathise with the mourning professor.I,in my time,have suffered like despair.I remember the day so well;it was my twelfth birthday.I recall the unholy joy with which I reflected that for the future my unfortunate parents would be called upon to pay for me full railway fare;it marked a decided step towards manhood.I was now in my teens.That very afternoon there came to visit us a relative of ours.She brought with her three small children:a girl,aged six;a precious,golden-haired thing in a lace collar that called itself a boy,aged five;and a third still smaller creature,it might have been male,it might have been female;I could not have told you at the time,I cannot tell you now.This collection of atoms was handed over to me.

"Now,show yourself a man,"said my dear mother,"remember you are in your teens.Take them out for a walk and amuse them;and mind nothing happens to them."To the children themselves their own mother gave instructions that they were to do everything that I told them,and not to tear their clothes or make themselves untidy.These directions,even to myself,at the time,appeared contradictory.But I said nothing.And out into the wilds the four of us departed.

I was an only child.My own infancy had passed from my memory.To me,at twelve,the ideas of six were as incomprehensible as are those of twenty to the University professor of forty.I wanted to be a pirate.Round the corner and across the road building operations were in progress.Planks and poles lay ready to one's hand.Nature,in the neighbourhood,had placed conveniently a shallow pond.It was Saturday afternoon.The nearest public-house was a mile away.

Immunity from interference by the British workman was thus assured.

It occurred to me that by placing my three depressed looking relatives on one raft,attacking them myself from another,taking the eldest girl's sixpence away from her,disabling their raft,and leaving them to drift without a rudder,innocent amusement would be provided for half an hour at least.

They did not want to play at pirates.At first sight of the pond the thing that called itself a boy began to cry.The six-year-old lady said she did not like the smell of it.Not even after I had explained the game to them were they any the more enthusiastic for it.

I proposed Red Indians.They could go to sleep in the unfinished building upon a sack of lime,I would creep up through the grass,set fire to the house,and dance round it,whooping and waving my tomahawk,watching with fiendish delight the frantic but futile efforts of the palefaces to escape their doom.

It did not "catch on"--not even that.The precious thing in the lace collar began to cry again.The creature concerning whom I could not have told you whether it was male or female made no attempt at argument,but started to run;it seemed to have taken a dislike to this particular field.It stumbled over a scaffolding pole,and then it also began to cry.What could one do to amuse such people?Ileft it to them to propose something.They thought they would like to play at "Mothers"--not in this field,but in some other field.

The eldest girl would be mother.The other two would represent her children.They had been taken suddenly ill."Waterworks,"as I had christened him,was to hold his hands to his middle and groan.His face brightened up at the suggestion.The nonde had the toothache.It took up its part without a moment's hesitation,and set to work to scream.I could be the doctor and look at their tongues.

That was their "ideal"game.As I have said,remembering that afternoon,I can sympathise with the University professor mourning the absence of University ideals in youth.Possibly at six my own ideal game may have been "Mothers."Looking back from the pile of birthdays upon which I now stand,it occurs to me that very probably it was.But from the perspective of twelve,the reflection that there were beings in the world who could find recreation in such fooling saddened me.

Eight years later,his father not being able to afford the time,Iconducted Master "Waterworks,"now a healthy,uninteresting,gawky lad,to a school in Switzerland.It was my first Continental trip.

I should have enjoyed it better had he not been with me.He thought Paris a "beastly hole."He did not share my admiration for the Frenchwoman;he even thought her badly dressed.

"Why she's so tied up,she can't walk straight,"was the only impression she left upon him.

We changed the subject;it irritated me to hear him talk.The beautiful Juno-like creatures we came across further on in Germany,he said were too fat.He wanted to see them run.I found him utterly soulless.

To expect a boy to love learning and culture is like expecting him to prefer old vintage claret to gooseberry wine.Culture for the majority is an acquired taste.Speaking personally,I am entirely in agreement with the University professor.I find knowledge,prompting to observation and leading to reflection,the most satisfactory luggage with which a traveller through life can provide himself.Iwould that I had more of it.To be able to enjoy a picture is of more advantage than to be able to buy it.