Text extracted from opening pages of book: C O U& E G E SONS and COLLEGE FATHERS HENRY SEIDEL CANBY ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH YALE UNIVERSITY HARPER & BROTHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON COLLEGE SONS AND COLLEGE FATHERS Copyright, 1915, by Warper & Brothers Printed in the United States of America Published September, 19x5 TO M. G. C. CONTENTS PAGE PREFACE vii THE UNDERGRADUATE 1 THE UNDERGRADUATE BACKGROUND 26 THE PROFESSOR 48 THE LUXURY OF BEING EDUCATED 71 COLLEGE LIFE AND COLLEGE EDUCATION 97 CULTURE AND PREJUDICE 118 THE COLLEGES AND MEDIOCRITY 138 CURRENT LITERATURE AND THE COLLEGES 159 WRITING ENGLISH 184 TEACHING ENGLISH 210 PREFACE FOB this book I have chosen the essay rather than the chapter as a unit of division, so that I might be able to discuss each of my topics as a subject important in itself. The ten essays here included proceed* I am emboldened to think, according to a development of experience and of thought that is coherent even if not severely logical. The first five treat of profit and loss in college life and college teaching; the last five of the broader problems that the American college must meet. But I have had no desire to mark out my field into sections, and cover them all. It is too extensive, too full of life and perplexity and happiness, to dogmatize and classify and divide and define within it. If I had been possessed of an elaborate ped agogical doctrine, I should have spent more time upon mapping the corners, and less upon trying to say truly what I have seen and what I think. Indeed, I am more interested in PREFACE college life, college students, and conditions as they are to-day in our colleges, than in any program or theory whatsoever. As it happened, it was not the rage of the propagandist, but rather the creative working of happy memory, and sobering experience reacting upon thought, that led to the writing of this book. Hence he who so desires may read these essays as a literary, and I trust not unpleasant, transcript of experience, selecting his topic as he chooses his cigar, for the promise of its label. Or if his interest is more profes sional, he will find the principles that I have endeavored to draw from observation applied and reapplied to the problems of the American college. I have written for undergraduates, present, past, and prospective, and for the pai'ents of undergraduates. It is true that I have ad dressed these essays to college sons and college fathers. But they may be applied, I believe, doubtless with important modifications of de tail, to college daughters and the mothers of college daughters as well. It is u sufficiently difficult task to describe even the sex one knows best, when it is involved in the obscure proo PREFACE esses of getting educated. And so I have ven tured to write for, but not of, the woman in our colleges. I wish to acknowledge the courtesy of Harper's Magazine and The Yale Review in permitting the reprint in revised form of these essays; and to thank a hundred unnamed un dergraduates for a personal relationship with out which I would not have had the courage to pretend to whatever insight they may possess. HENRY SEIDEL CANBY. NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT, June 17,