From a College Window | Page 4

to a great extent what these stately and beautiful
places were founded for--that there should be in the busy world a
corner where activities should not be so urgent, and where life should
pass like an old dream, tinged with delicate colour and soft sound. I
declare I do not know that it is more virtuous to be a clerk in a bank,
toiling day by day that others should be rich, than to live in thought and
meditation, with a heart open to sweet influences and pure hopes. And
yet it seems to be held nowadays that virtue is bound up with practical
life. If a man is content to abjure wealth and to forego marriage, to live
simply without luxuries, he may spend a very dignified, gentle life here,
and at the same time he may be really useful. It is a thing which is well
worth doing to attempt the reconciliation between the old and the
young. Boys come up here under the impression that their pastors and
teachers are all about fifty; they think of them as sensible,
narrow-minded men, and, like Melchizedek, without beginning of days
or end of life. They suppose that they like marking mistakes in
exercises with blue pencil, and take delight in showing their power by
setting punishments. It does not often occur to them that schoolmasters
may be pathetically anxious to guide boys right, and to guard them
from evil. They think of them as devoid of passions and prejudices,
with a little dreary space to traverse before they sink into the tomb.
Even in homes, how seldom does a perfectly simple human relation
exist between a boy and his father! There is often a great deal of
affection on both sides, but little camaraderie. Little boys are odd,
tiresome creatures in many ways, with savage instincts; and I suppose
many fathers feel that, if they are to maintain their authority, they must
be a little distant and inscrutable. A boy goes for sympathy and

companionship to his mother and sisters, not often to his father. Now a
Don may do something to put this straight, if he has the will. One of the
best friends I ever had was an elderly Don at my own college, who had
been a contemporary of my father's. He liked young men; and I used to
consult him and ask his advice in things in which I could not well
consult my own contemporaries. It is not necessary to be extravagantly
youthful, to slap people on the back, to run with the college boat,
though that is very pleasant if it is done naturally. All that is wanted is
to be accessible and quietly genial. And under such influences a young
man may, without becoming elderly, get to understand the older point
of view.
The difficulty is that one acquires habits and mannerisms; one is crusty
and gruff if interfered with. But, as Pater said, to acquire habits is
failure in life. Of course, one must realize limitations, and learn in what
regions one can be effective. But no one need be case-hardened,
smoke-dried, angular. The worst of a University is that one sees men
lingering on because they must earn a living, and there is nothing else
that they can do; but for a human-hearted, good-humoured, and
sensible man, a college life is a life where it is easy and pleasant to
practise benevolence and kindliness, and where a small investment of
trouble pays a large percentage of happiness. Indeed, surveying it
impartially--as impartially as I can--such a life seems to hold within it
perhaps the greatest possibilities of happiness that life can hold. To
have leisure and a degree of simple stateliness assured; to live in a
wholesome dignity; to have the society of the young and generous; to
have lively and intelligent talk; to have the choice of society and
solitude alike; to have one's working hours respected, and one's leisure
hours solaced--is not this better than to drift into the so-called tide of
professional success, with its dreary hours of work, its conventional
domestic background? No doubt the domestic background has its
interests, its delights; but one must pay a price for everything, and I am
more than willing to pay the price of celibacy for my independence.
The elderly Don in college rooms, interested in Greek particles,
grumbling over his port wine, is a figure beloved by writers of fiction
as a contrast to all that is brave, and bright, and wholesome in life.

Could there be a more hopeless misconception? I do not know a single
extant example of the species at the University. Personally, I have no
love for Greek particles, and only a very moderate taste for port wine.
But I do love, with all my heart,