PHILOSOPHY 4 .................................................................................................................................................1

Owen Wister............................................................................................................................................1

I...............................................................................................................................................................1

II ..............................................................................................................................................................4

III .............................................................................................................................................................6

IV............................................................................................................................................................8

V ............................................................................................................................................................18

Two frowning boys sat in their tennis flannels beneath the glare of lamp and gas. Their leather belts were

loosened, their soft pink shirts unbuttoned at the collar. They were listening with gloomy voracity to the

instruction of a third. They sat at a table bared of its customary sporting ornaments, and from time to time

they questioned, sucked their pencils, and scrawled vigorous, laconic notes. Their necks and faces shone with

the bloom of outofdoors. Studious concentration was evidently a painful novelty to their features. Drops of

perspiration came one by one from their matted hair, and their hands dampened the paper upon which they

wrote. The windows stood open wide to the May darkness, but nothing came in save heat and insects; for

spring, being behind time, was making up with a sultry burst at the end, as a delayed train makes the last few

miles high above schedule speed. Thus it has been since eight o'clock. Eleven was daintily striking now. Its

diminutive sonority might have belonged to some churchbell far distant across the Cambridge silence; but it

was on a shelf in the room,a timepiece of Gallic design, representing Mephistopheles, who caressed the

world in his lap. And as the little strokes boomed, eightnine teneleven, the voice of the instructor

"By starting from the Absolute Intelligence, the chief cravings of the reason, after unity and spirituality,

receive due satisfaction. Something transcending the Objective becomes possible. In the Cogito the relation

of subject and object is implied as the primary condition of all knowledge. Now, Plato never"

"Yep," assented the other, rattling through the back pages of his notes. "Got Plato down cold

somewhere,oh, here. He never caught on to the subjective, any more than the other Greek bucks. Go on to

"If you gentlemen have mastered thethe Grreek bucks," observed the instructor, with sleek intonation,

"Yep," said the second tennis boy, running a rapid judicial eye over his back notes, "you've put us on to their

The instructor turned a few pages forward in the thick book of his own neat typewritten notes and then

"We went to those lectures ourselves," explained the second, whirling through another dishevelled notebook.

"Oh, yes. Hobbes and his gang. There is only one substance, matter, but it doesn't strictly exist. Bodies exist.

The instructor went forward a few pages more in his exhaustive volume. He had attended all the lectures but

three throughout the year, taking them down in shorthand. Laryngitis had kept him from those three, to

which however, he had sent a stenographic friend so that the chain was unbroken. He now took up the next

philosopher on the list; but his smooth discourse was, after a short while, rudely shaken. It was the second

"Do you mean he claims," said the first boy, equally resentful, "that if we were all extinguished the world

would still be here, only there'd be no difference between blue and pink, for instance?"

"The reason is clear," responded the tutor, blandly. He adjusted his eyeglasses, placed their elastic cord

behind his ear, and referred to his notes. "It is human sight that distinguishes between colors. If human sight

be eliminated from the universe, nothing remains to make the distinction, and consequently there will be

none. Thus also is it with sounds. If the universe contains no ear to hear the sound, the sound has no

The tutor smiled. "Is it not clear," said he, "that there can be no sound if it is not heard!"

"It's clear enough what he's driving at of course, "pursued the first boy. "Until the waves of sound or light or

what not hit us through our senses, our brains don't experience the sensations of sound or light or what not,

"Well, just tell me how that proves a thunderstorm in a desert island makes no noise."

"That's mere juggling!" vociferated the boy," That's merely the same kind of toyshop braintrick you gave

us out of Greek philosophy yesterday, They said there was no such thing as motion because at every instant

of time the moving body had to be somewhere, so how could it get anywhere else? Good Lord! I can make up

foolishness like that myself. For instance: A moving body can never stop. Why? Why, because at every

instant of time it must be going at a certain rate, so how can it ever get slower? Pooh!" He stopped. He had

been gesticulating with one hand, which he now jammed wrathfully into his pocket.

The tutor must have derived great pleasure from his own smile, for he prolonged and deepened and variously

modified it while his shiny little calculating eyes travelled from one to the other of his ruddy scholars. He

coughed, consulted his notes, and went through all the paces of superiority. "I can find nothing about a body's

being unable to stop," said he, gently. "If logic makes no appeal to you, gentlemen"

"Oh, bunch!" exclaimed the second tennis boy, in the slang of his period, which was the early eighties. "Look

"And that's because they depend on our senses? Very well. But he claims solidity and shape and distance do

exist independently of us. If we all died, they'd he here just the same, though the others wouldn't. A flower

would go on growing, but it would stop smelling. Very well. Now you tell me how we ascertain solidity. By

the touch, don't we? Then, if there was nobody to touch an object, what then? Seems to me touch is just as

much of a sense as your nose is." (He meant no personality, but the first boy choked a giggle as the speaker

hotly followed up his thought.)" Seems to me by his reasoning that in a desert island there'd be nothing it

"By Jove!" said the other boy, not heeding him, "and here's another point: if color is entirely in my brain, why

don't that inkbottle and this shirt look alike to me? They ought to. And why don't a Martini cocktail and a

cup of coffee taste the same to my tongue?" "Berkeley," attempted the tutor, "demonstrates"

"Do you mean to say," the boy rushed on, "that there is no eternal quality in all these things which when it

The tutor surveyed his notes. "I can discover no such suggestions here as you are pleased to make" said he.

"But your orriginal researches," he continued most obsequiously, "recall our next subject,Berkeley and the

"Let's see," said the second boy, pondering; "I went to two or three lectures about that time.

BerkeleyBerkeley. Didn't heoh, yes! he did. He went the whole hog. Nothing's anywhere except in your

The first boy slapped his leg and lighted a cigarette. "I remember," said he. "Amounts to this: If I were to stop

"Which is balls," observed the second boy, judicially, again in the slang of his period, "and can be proved so.

The first boy, after a slight wink at the second, addressed the tutor. "Supposing you were to happen to forget

The tutor turned his little eyes doubtfully upon the tennis boys, but answered, reciting the language of his

notes: "The idealistic theory does not apply to the thinking ego, but to the world of external phenomena. The

"But a billion dollars is inconceivable," retorted the boy. "No mind can take in a sum of that size; but it

"Put that down! put that down!" shrieked the other boy. "You've struck something. If we get Berkeley on the

paper, I'll run that in." He wrote rapidly, and then took a turn around the room, frowning as he walked. "The

actuality of a thing," said he, summing his clever thoughts up, "is not disproved by its being inconceivable.

Ideas alone depend upon thought for their existence. There! Anybody can get off stuff like that by the yard."

He picked up a cork and a footrule, tossed the cork, and sent it flying out of the window with the footrule.

"Necessary and accidental truths," answered the tutor, reading the subjects from his notes. "Hume and the

"The hardboiled ego," commented the boy the ruler; and he batted a swooping Junebug into space.

Conversation ceased. Instruction went forward. Their pencils worked. The causal law, etc., went into their

condensed notes like Liebig's extract of beef, and drops of perspiration continued to trickle from their matted

Bertie and Billy were sophomores. They had been alive for twenty years, and were young. Their tutor was

also a sophomore. He too had been alive for twenty years, but never yet had become young. Bertie and Billy

had colonial names (Rogers, I think, and Schuyler), but the tutor's name was Oscar Maironi, and he was

charging his pupils five dollars an hour each for his instruction. Do not think this excessive. Oscar could have

tutored a whole class of irresponsibles, and by that arrangement have earned probably more; but Bertie and

Billy had preempted him on account of his fame or high standing and accuracy, and they could well afford it.

All three sophomores alike had happened to choose Philosophy 4 as one of their elective courses, and all

alike were now face to face with the Day of Judgment. The final examinations had begun. Oscar could lay his

hand upon his studious heart and await the Day of Judgment likeI had nearly said a Christian! His notes

were full: Three hundred pages about Zeno and Parmenides and the rest, almost every word as it had come

from the professor's lips. And his memory was full, too, flowing like a player's lines. With the right cue he

could recite instantly: "An important application of this principle, with obvious reference to Heracleitos,

occurs in Aristotle, who says" He could do this with the notes anywhere. I am sure you appreciate Oscar

and his great power of acquiring facts. So he was ready, like the wise virgins of parable. Bertie and Billy did

not put one in mind of virgins: although they had burned considerable midnight oil, it had not been to throw

light upon Philosophy 4. In them the mere word Heracleitos had raised a chill no later than yesterday,the

chill of the unknown. They had not attended the lectures on the "Greek bucks." Indeed, profiting by their

privilege of voluntary recitations, they had dropped in but seldom on Philosophy 4. These blithe grasshoppers

had danced and sung away the precious storing season, and now that the bleak hour of examinations was

upon them, their wakedup hearts had felt aghast at the sudden vision of their ignorance. It was on a Monday

noon that this feeling came fully upon them, as they read over the names of the philosophers. Thursday was

the day of the examination. "Who's Anaxagoras?" Billy had inquired of Bertie. "I'll tell you," said Bertie, "if

you'll tell me who Epicharmos of Kos was." And upon this they embraced with helpless laughter. Then they

reckoned up the hours left for them to learn Epicharmos of Kos in,between Monday noon and Thursday

morning at nine,and their quailing chill increased. A tutor must be called in at once. So the grasshoppers,

Closeted with Oscar and his notes, they had, as Bertie put it, salted down the early Greek bucks by seven on

Monday evening. By the same midnight they had, as Billy expressed it, called the turn on Plato. Tuesday was

a second day of concentrated swallowing. Oscar had taken them through the thought of many centuries.

There had been intermissions for lunch and dinner only; and the weather was exceedingly hot. The

paleskinned Oscar stood this strain better than the unaccustomed Bertie and Billy. Their jovial eyes had

grown hollow tonight, although their minds were going gallantly, as you have probably noticed. Their

criticisms, slangy and abrupt, struck the scholastic Oscar as flippancies which he must indulge, since the pay

was handsome. That these idlers should jump in with doubts and questions not contained in his sacred notes

raised in him feelings betrayed just once in that remark about "orriginal rresearch."

"Gentlemen," he said, closing the sacred notes, "we have finished the causal law."

"Don't believe it is," Billy answered. "I heard him at it once." (This meant that Billy had gone to a lecture

"Hm!" said Bertie. "Hm! Subjective and objective again, I suppose, only applied to oneself. You see, that

table is objective. I can stand off and judge it. It's outside of me; has nothing to do with me. That's easy. But

"An excellent illustration," said Bertie. "That is subjective in me. Similar to your dislike of water as a

beverage. That is subjective in you. But here comes the twist. I can think of my own anger and judge it, just

as if it were an outside thing, like a table. I can compare it with itself on different mornings or with other

"Yes," said Billy; "I recognize that it is greater at times and less at others."

"Subject and object," said Billy. "Perfectly true, and very queer when you try to think of it. Wonder how far it

goes? Of course, one can explain the body's being an object to the brain inside it. That's mind and matter over

again. But when my own mind and thought, can become objects to themselvesI wonder how far that does

"Gentlemen," said Oscar, who had been listening to them with patient, Oriental diversion, "I"

"Oh," said Bertie, remembering him. "Look here. We mustn't keep you up. We're awfully obliged for the way

you are putting us on to this. You're saving our lives. Ten tomorrow for a grand review of the whole

"Oh, I forgot. Well, it's too late tonight. Is it much? Are there many dates and names and things?"

"It is more of a general inquiry and analysis," replied Oscar. "But it is forty pages of my notes." And he

smiled. "Well, look here. It would be nice to have tomorrow clear for review. We're not tired. You leave us

Oscar's hand almost moved to cover and hold his precious property, for this instinct was the deepest in him.

But it did not so move, because his intelligence controlled his instinct nearly, though not quite, always. His

shiny little eyes, however, became furtive and antagonisticsomething the boys did not at first make out.

Oscar gave himself a moment of silence. "I could not brreak my rule," said he then. "I do not ever leave my

notes with anybody. Mr. Woodridge asked for my History 3 notes, and Mr. Bailey wanted my notes for Fine

"Well, gentlemen, I would rather not. You would take good care, I know, but there are sometimes things

At this racial suggestion both boys made the room joyous with mirth. Oscar stood uneasily contemplating

them. He would never be able to understand them, not as long as he lived, nor they him. When their mirth

Was over he did somewhat better, but it was tardy. You see, he was not a specimen of the first rank, or he

would have said at once what he said now: "I wish to study my notes a little myself, gentlemen."

"Go along, Oscar, with your inflammable notes, go along!" said Bertie, in supreme goodhumor. "And we'll

meet tomorrow at tenif there hasn't been a fireBetter keep your notes in the bath, Oscar."

In as much haste as could be made with a good appearance, Oscar buckled his volume in its leather cover,

gathered his hat and pencil, and, bidding his pupils a very good night, sped smoothly out of the room.

Oscar Maironi was very poor. His thin gray suit in summer resembled his thick gray suit in winter. It does not

seem that he had more than two; but he had a black coat and waistcoat, and a narrowbrimmed, shiny hat to

go with these, and one pair of patentleather shoes that laced, and whose long soles curved upward at the toe

like the rockers of a summerhotel chair. These holiday garments served him in all seasons; and when you

saw him dressed in them, and seated in a car bound for Park Square, you knew he was going into Boston,

where he would read manuscript essays on Botticelli or Pico della Mirandola, or manuscript translations of

Armenian folksongs; read these to ecstatic, dimeyed ladies in Newbury Street, who would pour him cups of

tea when it was over, and speak of his earnestness after he was gone. It did not do the ladies any harm; but I

am not sure that it was the best thing for Oscar. It helped him feel every day, as he stepped along to

recitations with his elbow clamping his books against his ribs and his heavy black curls bulging down from

his gray slouch hat to his collar, how meritorious he was compared with Bertie and Billywith all Berties

and Billies. He may have been. Who shall say? But I will say at once that chewing the cud of one's own

Bertie's and Billy's parents owned town and country houses in New York. The parents of Oscar had come

over in the steerage. Money filled the pockets of Bertie and Billy; therefore were their heads empty of money

and full of less cramping thoughts. Oscar had fallen upon the reverse of this fate. Calculation was his second

nature. He had given his education to himself; he had for its sake toiled, traded, outwitted, and saved. He had

sent himself to college, where most of the hours not given to education and more education, went to toiling

and more toiling, that he might pay his meagre way through the college world. He had a cheaper room and

ate cheaper meals than was necessary. He tutored, and he wrote college specials for several newspapers. His

chief relaxation was the praise of the ladies in Newbury Street. These told him of the future which awaited

him, and when they gazed upon his features were put in mind of the dying Keats. Not that Oscar was going to

die in the least. Life burned strong in him. There were sly times when he took what he had saved by his cheap

meals and room and went to Boston with it, and for a few hours thoroughly ceased being ascetic. Yet Oscar

felt meritorious when he considered Bertie and Billy; for, like the socialists, merit with him meant not being

able to live as well as your neighbor. You will think that I have given to Oscar what is familiarly termed a

black eye. But I was once inclined to applaud his struggle for knowledge, until I studied him close and

perceived that his love was not for the education he was getting. Bertie and Billy loved play for play's own

sake, and in play forgot themselves, like the wholesome young creatures that they were. Oscar had one love

only: through all his days whatever he might forget, he would remember himself; through all his days he

would make knowledge show that self off. Thank heaven, all the poor students in Harvard College were not

Oscars! I loved some of them as much as I loved Bertie and Billy. So there is no black eye about it. Pity

Oscar, if you like; but don't be so mushy as to admire him as he stepped along in the night, holding his notes,

full of his knowledge, thinking of Bertie and Billy, conscious of virtue, and smiling his smile. They were not

conscious of any virtue, were Bertie and Billy, nor were they smiling. They were solemnly eating up together

a box of handsome strawberries and sucking the juice from their reddened thumbs.

"Rather mean not to make him wait and have some of these after his hard work on us," said Bertie. "I'd

"Wasn't he absurd about his old notes? "Bertie went on, a new strawberry in his mouth. "We don't need them,

"Yes, tomorrow," sighed Billy. "It's awful to think of another day of this kind."

"Yes, he is. He can talk the actual words of the notes. Probably he could teach the course himself. I don't

suppose he buys any strawberries, even when they get ripe and cheap here. What's the matter with you?"

Billy had broken suddenly into merriment. "I don't believe Oscar owns a bath," he explained.

"By Jove! so his notes will burn in spite of everything!" And both of the tennis boys shrieked foolishly.

Then Billy began taking his clothes off, strewing them in the windowseat, or anywhere that they happened

to drop; and Bertie, after hitting another cork or two out of the window with the tennis racket, departed to his

own room on another floor and left Billy to immediate and deep slumber. This was broken for a few moments

when Billy's roommate returned happy from an excursion which had begun in the morning.

"Softshell crabs, broiled live lobster, salmon, grassplover, doughbirds, rum omelette. Bet you five dollars

The roommate went out into the sitting room, and noting the signs there of the hard work which had gone

on during his absence, was glad that he did not take Philosophy 4. He was soon asleep also.

BILLY got up early. As he plunged into his cold bath he envied his roommate, who could remain at rest

indefinitely, while his own hard lot was hurrying him to prayers and breakfast and Oscar's inexorable notes.

He sighed once more as he looked at the beauty of the new morning and felt its air upon his cheeks. He and

Bertie belonged to the same clubtable, and they met there mournfully over the oatmeal. This very hour

tomorrow would see them eating their last before the examination in Philosophy 4. And nothing pleasant

was going to happen between,nothing that they could dwell upon with the slightest satisfaction. Nor had

their sleep entirely refreshed them. Their eyes were not quite right, and their hair, though it was brushed,

"Philosophers I have met," murmured Billy, with scorn And they ate silently for some time.

"There's one thing that's valuable," said Bertie next. "When they spring those tricks on you about the flying

arrow not moving, and all the rest, and prove it all right by logic, you learn what pure logic amounts to when

it cuts loose from common sense. And Oscar thinks it's immense. We shocked him."

Now, to the undergraduate mind of that day the BirdinHand tavern was what the golden fleece used to be

to the Greeks, a sort of shining, remote, miraculous thing, difficult though not impossible to find, for

which expeditions were fitted out. It was reported to be somewhere in the direction of Quincy, and in one

respect it resembled a ghost: you never saw a man who had seen it himself; it was always his cousin, or his

elder brother in '79. But for the successful explorer a dinner and wines were waiting at the BirdinHand

more delicious than anything outside of Paradise. You will realize, therefore, what a thing it was to have a

roommate who had attained. If Billy had not been so dogtired last night, he would have sat up and made

"Softshell crabs, broiled live lobster, salmon, grassplover, doughbirds, and rum omelette," he was now

"They say the rum there is old Jamaica brought in slaveships," said Bertie, reverently.

Bertie looked out of the window. "This is the finest day there's been," said he. Then he looked at his watch. It

was twentyfive minutes before Oscar. Then he looked Billy hard in the eye. "Have you any sand?" he

Both of them in an instant had left the table and bounded out of the house. "I'll meet you at Pike's," said Billy

"Might as well bring our notes along," Bertie called after his rushing friend; "and get John to tell you the

To see their haste, as the two fled in opposite directions upon their errands, you would have supposed them

Twenty minutes later they were seated behind the black gelding and bound on their journey in search of the

"Oscar will wonder," said Bertie; and he gave the black gelding a triumphant touch with the whip.

You see, it was Oscar that had made them run go; or, rather, it was Duty and Fate walking in Oscar's

displeasing likeness. Nothing easier, nothing more reasonable, than to see the tutor and tell him they should

not need him today. But that would have spoiled everything. They did not know it, but deep in their

childlike hearts was a delicious sense that in thus unaccountably disappearing they had won a great game, had

got away ahead of Duty and Fate. After all it did bear some resemblance to an escape from justice. .

Could he have known this, Oscar would have felt more superior than ever. Punctually at the hour agreed, ten

o'clock he rapped at Billy's door and stood waiting, his leather wallet of notes nipped safe between elbow and

ribs. Then he knocked again. Then he tried the door, and as it was open, he walked deferentially into the

sitting room. Sonorous snores came from one of the bedrooms. Oscar peered in and saw John; but he saw no

Billy in the other bed. Then, always deferential, he sat down in the sitting room and watched a couple of

At that moment the black gelding was flirtatiously crossing the drawbridge over the Charles on the Allston

Road. The gelding knew the clank of those suspending chains and the slight unsteadiness of the meeting

halves of the bridge as well as it knew oats. But it could not enjoy its own entirely premeditated surprise quite

so much as Bertie and Billy were enjoying their entirely unpremeditated flight from Oscar. The wind rippled

on the water; down at the boathouse Smith was helping some one embark in a single scull; they saw the

green meadows toward Brighton; their foreheads felt cool and unvexed, and each new minute had the savor

"I forgot I had a bet with John until I had waked him," said Billy. "He bet me five last night I couldn't find it,

and I took him. Of course, after that I had no right to ask him anything, and he thought I was funny. He said I

couldn't find out if the landlady's hair was her own. I went him another five on that."

They were now crossing the Albany tracks at Allston. "We're going to get there," said Bertie; and he turned

The enchanting day surrounded them. The suburban houses, even the suburban streetcars, seemed part of

one great universal plan of enjoyment. Pleasantness so radiated from the boys' faces and from their general

appearance of clean white flannel trousers and soft clean shirts of pink and blue that a driver on a passing car

leaned to look after them with a smile and a butcher hailed them with loud brotherhood from his cart. They

turned a corner, and from a long way off came the sight of the tower of Memorial Hall. Plain above all

intervening tenements and foliage it rose. Over there beneath its shadow were examinations and Oscar. It

caught Billy's roving eye, and he nudged Bertie, pointing silently to it. "Ha, ha!" sang Bertie. And beneath his

The clocks of Massachusetts struck eleven. Oscar rose doubtfully from his chair in Billy's study. Again he

looked into Billy's bedroom and at the empty bed. Then he went for a moment and watched the still forcibly

sleeping John. He turned his eyes this way and that, and after standing for a while moved quietly back to his

chair and sat down with the leather wallet of notes on his lap, his knees together, and his unblocked shoes

In a meadow where a brown amber stream ran, lay Bertie and Billy on the grass. Their summer coats were

off, their belts loosened. They watched with eyes half closed the long waterweeds moving gently as the

current waved and twined them. The black gelding, brought along a farm road and through a gate, waited at

its ease in the field beside a stone wall. Now and then it stretched and cropped a young leaf from a vine that

grew over the wall, and now and then the want wind brought down the fruit blossoms all over the meadow.

They fell from the tree where Bertie and Billy lay, and the boys brushed them from their faces. Not very far

away was Blue Hill, softly shining; and crows high up in the air came from it occasionally across here. By

one o'clock a change had come in Billy's room. Oscar during that hour had opened his satchel of philosophy

upon his lap and read his notes attentively. Being almost word perfect in many parts of them, he now spent

his unexpected leisure in acquiring accurately the language of still further paragraphs." The sharp line of

demarcation which Descartes drew between consciousness and the material world," whispered Oscar with

satisfaction, and knew that if Descartes were on the examination paper he could start with this and go on for

nearly twenty lines before he would have to use any words of his own. As he memorized, the chambermaid,

who had come to do the bedrooms three times already and had gone away again, now returned and no longer

restrained her indignation. "Get up Mr. Blake! " she vociferated to the sleeping John; "you ought to be

ashamed!" And she shook the bedstead. Thus John had come to rise and discover Oscar. The patient tutor

"But, my dear sir, those gentlemen know nothing! Philosophy 4 is tomorrow, and they know nothing."

"And my time. I am waiting here. I am engaged to teach them. I have been waiting here since ten. They

"I don't believe there's the slightest use in your waiting now, you know. They'll probably let you know when

"Probably! But they have engaged my time. The girl knows I was here ready at ten. I call you to witness that

John in his pyjamas stared at Oscar. "Why, of course they'll pay you the whole thing," said he, coldly; "stay

The tutor stood awhile, holding his notes and turning his little eyes this way and that. His young days had

been dedicated to getting the better of his neighbor, because otherwise his neighbor would get the better of

him. Oscar had never suspected the existence of boys like John and Bertie and Billy. He stood holding his

notes, and then, buckling them up once more, he left the room with evidently reluctant steps. It was at this

In their field among the soft new grass sat Bertie and Billy some ten yards apart, each with his back against

an apple tree. Each had his notes and took his turn at questioning the other. Thus the names of the Greek

philosophers with their dates and doctrines were shouted gayly in the meadow. The foreheads of the boys

were damp today, as they had been last night, and their shirts were opened to the air; but it was the sun that

made them hot now, and no lamp or gas; and already they looked twice as alive as they had looked at

breakfast. There they sat, while their memories gripped the summarized list of facts essential, facts to be

known accurately; the simple, solid, raw facts, which, should they happen to come on the examination paper,

no skill could evade nor any imagination supply. But this study was no longer dry and dreadful to them: they

had turned it to a sporting event. "What about Heracleitos?" Billy as catechist would put at Bertie. "Eternal

flux," Bertie would correctly snap back at Billy. Or, if he got it mixed up, and replied, "Everything is water,"

which was the doctrine of another Greek, then Billy would credit himself with twentyfive cents on a piece

of paper. Each ran a memorandum of this kind; and you can readily see how spirited a character metaphysics

"I'm going in," said Bertie, suddenly, as Billy was crediting himself with a fiftycent gain. "What's your

"No, it won't. Well, I'm only a quarter behind you." And Bertie puffed off his shoes. Soon he splashed into

"Cold?" inquired Billy on the bank. Bertie closed his eyes dreamily. "Delicious," said he, and sank

Billy had his clothes off in a moment, and, taking the plunge, screamed loudly "You liar!" he yelled, as he

Delight rendered Bertie weak and helpless; he was caught and ducked; and after some vigorous wrestling

"Use your notes," said Bertie, and he rolled in the grass. Then they chased each other round the apple trees,

While they were dressing they discovered it was halfpast one, and became instantly famished. "We should

have brought lunch along," they told each other. But they forgot that no such thing as lunch could have

induced them to delay their escape from Cambridge for a moment this morning. "What do you suppose Oscar

is doing now?" Billy inquired of Bertie, as they led the black gelding back to the road; and Bertie laughed

like an infant. "Gentlemen," said he, in Oscar's manner, "we now approach the multiplicity of the ego." The

Oscar, as a matter of fact, was eating his cheap lunch away over in Cambridge. There was cold mutton, and

boiled potatoes with hard brown spots in them, and large picked cucumbers; and the salt was damp and would

not shake out through the holes in the top of the bottle. But Oscar ate two helps of everything with a good

appetite, and between whiles looked at his notes, which lay open beside him on the table. At the stroke of two

he was again knocking at his pupils' door. But no answer came. John had gone away somewhere for

indefinite hours and the door was locked. So Oscar wrote: "Called, two p.m.," on a scrap of envelope, signed

his name, and put it through the letterslit. It crossed his mind to hunt other pupils for his vacant time, but he

decided against this at once, and returned to his own room. Three o'clock found him back at the door,

knocking scrupulously, The idea of performing his side of the contract, of tendering his goods and standing

ready at all times to deliver them, was in his commercially mature mind. This time he had brought a neat

piece of paper with him, and wrote upon it, "Called, three P.M.," and signed it as before, and departed to his

Bertie and Billy had lunched at Mattapan quite happily on cold ham, cold pie, and doughnuts. Mattapan, not

being accustomed to such lilies of the field, stared at their clothes and general glory, but observed that they

could eat the native billoffare as well as anybody. They found some good, cool beer, moreover, and spoke

to several people of the BirdinHand, and got several answers: for instance, that the BirdinHand was at

Hingham; that it was at Nantasket; that they had better inquire for it at South Braintree; that they had passed

it a mile back; and that there was no such place. If you would gauge the intelligence of our population,

inquire your way in a rural neighborhood. With these directions they took up their journey after an hour and a

half,a halt made chiefly for the benefit of the black gelding, whom they looked after as much as they did

themselves. For a while they discussed club matters seriously, as both of them were officers of certain

organizations, chosen so on account of their recognized executive gifts. These questions settled, they resumed

the lighter theme of philosophy, and made it (as Billy observed) a near thing for the Causal law. But as they

drove along, their minds left this topic on the abrupt discovery that the sun was getting down out of the sky,

and they asked each other where they were and what they should do. They pulled up at some crossroads and

debated this with growing uneasiness. Behind them lay the way to Cambridge, not very clear, to be sure;

but you could always go where you had come from, Billy seemed to think. He asked, "How about Cambridge

and a little Oscar to finish off with?" Bertie frowned. This would be failure. Was Billy willing to go back and

"Ten," Bertie corrected. He recalled to Billy the matter about the landlady's hair.

"By Jove, that's so!" cried Billy, brightening. It seemed conclusive. But he grew cloudy again the next

Billy made an unseemly rejoinder, but even in the making was visited by inspiration. He saw the whole thing

as it really was. "By Jove!" said he, "we couldn't get back in time for dinner."

"There's my bonny boy!" said Bertie, with pride; and he touched up the black gelding. Uneasiness had left

both of them. Cambridge was manifestly impossible; an error in judgment; food compelled them to seek the

BirdinHand. "We'll try Quincy, anyhow," Bertie said. Billy suggested that they inquire of people on the

road. This provided a new sporting event: they could bet upon the answers. Now, the roads, not populous at

noon, had grown solitary in the sweetness of the long twilight. Voices of birds there were; and little, black,

quick brooks, full to the margin grass, shot under the roadway through low bridges. Through the web of

young foliage the sky shone saffron, and frogs piped in the meadow swamps. No cart or carriage appeared,

however, and the bets languished. Bertie, driving with one hand, was buttoning his coat with the other, when

the black gelding leaped from the middle of the road to the turf and took to backing. The buggy reeled; but

the driver was skilful, and fifteen seconds of whip and presence of mind brought it out smoothly. Then the

They looked, and saw him in huge white shirtsleeves, shaking with joviality. "If you kep' at it long enough

you might amost learn to drive a horse," he continued, eying Bertie. This came as near direct praise as the

true son of our soilNorthern or Southernoften thinks well of. Bertie was pleased, but made a modest

observation, and "Are we near the tavern?" he asked. "BirdinHand!" the son of the soil echoed ; and he

contemplated them from his gate. That's me," he stated, with complacence. "Bill Diggs of the BirdinHand

has been me since April, '65." His massy hair had been yellow, his broad body must have weighed two

hundred and fifty pounds, his face was canny, red, and somewhat clerical, resembling Henry Ward Beecher's.

"Trout," he said, pointing to a basket by the gate. "For your dinner. "Then he climbed heavily but skilfully

down and picked up the basket and a rod. "Folks round here say," said he, "that there ain't no more trout up

them meadows. They've been asayin' that since '74; and I've been asayin' it myself, when judicious." Here

he shook slightly and opened the basket. "Twelve," he said. "Sixteen yesterday. Now you go along and turn

in the first righthand turn, and I'll be up with you soon. Maybe you might make room for the trout." Room

for him as well, they assured him; they were in luck to find him, they explained. "Well, I guess I'll trust my

neck with you," he said to Bertie, the skillful driver; "'tain't five minutes' risk." The buggy leaned, and its

springs bent as he climbed in, wedging his mature bulk between their slim shapes. The gelding looked round

the shaft at them. "Protestin', are you?" he said to it. "These lightweight stoodents spile you!" So the gelding

went on, expressing, however, by every line of its body, a sense of outraged justice. The boys related their

difficult search, and learned that any mention of the name of Diggs would have brought them straight. "Bill

Higgs of the BirdinHand was my father, and my grandf'ther, and his father; and has been me sence I come

back from the war and took the business in '65. I'm not commonly to be met out this late. About fifteen

minutes earlier is my time for gettin' back, unless I'm plannin' for a jamboree. But tonight I got to settin' and

watchin' that sunset, and listenin' to a darned redwinged blackbird, and I guess Mrs. Higgs has decided to

expect me somewheres about noon tomorrow or Friday. Say, did Johnnie send you? "When he found that

John had in a measure been responsible for their journey, he filled with gayety. "Oh, Johnnie's a bird!" said

he. "He's that demure on first appearance. Walked in last evening and wanted dinner. Did he tell you what he

You might suppose that upon their landlord's safe and sober return fifteen minutes late, instead of on the

expected noon of Thursday or Friday, their landlady would show signs of pleasure; but Mrs. Diggs from the

porch threw an uncordial eye at the three arriving in the buggy. Here were two more like Johnnie of last

night. She knew them by the clothes they wore and by the confidential tones of her husband's voice as he

chatted to them. He had been old enough to know better for twenty years. But for twenty years he had taken

the same extreme joy in the company of Johnnies, and they were bad for his health. Her final proof that they

belonged to this hated breed was when Mr. Diggs thumped the trout down on the porch, and after briefly

remarking, "Half of 'em boiled, and half broiled with bacon," himself led away the gelding to the stable

"You may set in the parlor," said Mrs. Diggs, and departed stiffly with the basket of trout.

Presently, as they sat near a parlor organ in the presence of earnest family portraits, Bertie made a new poem

"In here, are you?" said their beaming host at the door. "Now, I think you'd find my department of the

premises cosier, so to speak." He nudged Bertie. "Do you boys guess it's too early in the season for a

We must not wholly forget Oscar in Cambridge. During the afternoon he had not failed in his punctuality;

two more neat witnesses to this lay on the doormat beneath the letterslit of Billy's room, And at the

appointed hour after dinner a third joined them, making five. John found these cards when he came home to

go to bed, and picked them up and stuck them ornamentally in Billy's lookingglass, as a greeting when Billy

should return, The eight o'clock visit was the last that Oscar paid to the locked door, He remained through the

evening in his own room, studious, contented, unventilated, indulging in his thick notes, and also in the

thought of Billy's and Bertie's eleventhhour scholarship, " Even with another day," he told himself, "those

young men could not have got fifty per cent," In those times this was the passing mark. Today I believe you

get an A, or a B, or some other letter denoting your rank. In due time Oscar turned out his gas and got into his

Mrs. Diggs of the BirdinHand had retired at eleven, furious with rage, but firm in dignity in spite of a

sudden misadventure. Her hair, being the subject of a sporting event, had remained steadily fixed in Billy's

mind,steadily fixed throughout an entertainment which began at an early hour to assume the features of a

celebration. One silverfizz before dinner is nothing; but dinner did not come at once, and the boys were

thirsty. The hair of Mrs. Diggs had caught Billy's eye again immediately upon her entrance to inform them

that the meal was ready ; and whenever she reentered with a new course from the kitchen, Billy's eye

wandered back to it, although Mr. Diggs had become full of anecdotes about the Civil War. It was partly

Grecian: a knot stood out behind to a considerable distance. But this was not the whole plan. From front to

back ran a parting, clear and severe, and curls fell from this to the temples in a manner called, I believe, by

the enlightened, a l'Anne d'Autriche. The color was gray, to be sure; but this propriety did not save the

structure from Billy's increasing observation. As bottles came to stand on the table in greater numbers, the

closer and the more solemnly did Billy continue to follow the movements of Mrs. Diggs. They would without

doubt have noticed him and his foreboding gravity but for Mr. Diggs's experiences in the Civil War.

The repast was finishedso far as eating went. Mrs. Diggs with changeless dudgeon was removing and

washing the dishes. At the revellers' elbows stood the 1820 port in its fine, fat, old, dingy bottle, going pretty

fast. Mr. Diggs was nearing the end of Antietam." That morning of the 18th, while McClellan was holdin' us

squattin' and cussin'," he was saying to Bertie, when some sort of shuffling sound in the corner caught their

attention. We can never know how it happened. Billy ought to know, but does not, and Mrs. Diggs allowed

no subsequent reference to the casualty. But there she stood with her entire hair at right angles. The Grecian

knot extended above her left ear, and her nose stuck through one set of Anne d'Autriche. Beside her Billy

Mr. Diggs sat straight up at the vision of his spouse. "Flouncing Florence!" was his exclamation.

"Geewhittaker, Mary, if you ain't the most unmitigated sight!" And wind then left him.

Mary's reply arrived in tones like a hornet stinging slowly and often. "Mr. Diggs, I have put up with many

things, and am expecting to put up with many more. But you'd behave better if you consorted with

The door slammed and she was gone. Not a word to either of the boys, not even any notice of them. It was

"He'll apologize," went Billy, like a cheerful piece of mechanism. Responsibility was still quite distant from

Mr. Diggs got his wind back. "Better not," he advised in something near a whisper. "Better not go after her.

Her father was a fightin' preacher, and she'swell, begosh! she's a chip of the old pulpit." And he rolled his

eye towards the door. Another door slammed somewhere above, and they gazed at each other, did Bertie and

Mr. Diggs. Then Mr. Diggs, still gazing at Bertie, beckoned to him with a speaking eye and a crooked finger;

and as he beckoned, Bertie approached like a conspirator and sat down close to him. "Begosh!" whispered

Mr. Diggs. "Unmitigated." And at this he and Bertie laid their heads down on the table and rolled about in

Billy from his corner seemed to become aware of them, With his eye fixed upon them like a statue, he came

across the room, and, sitting down near them with formal politeness, observed, "Was you ever to the battle of

Antietam?" This sent them beyond the limit; and they rocked their heads on the table and wept as if they

Thus the three remained, during what space of time is not known: the two upon the table, convalescent with

relapses, and Billy like a seated idol, unrelaxed at his vigil. The party was seen through the windows by Silas,

coming from the stable to inquire if the gelding should not be harnessed. Silas leaned his face to the pane, and

envy spoke plainly in it. "O my! O my!" he mentioned aloud to himself. So we have the whole household:

Mrs. Diggs reposing scornfully in an upper chamber; all parts of the tavern darkened, save the one lighted

room; the three inside that among their bottles, with the one outside looking covetously in at them; and the

But Silas, since he could not share, was presently of opinion that this was enough for one sitting, and he

tramped heavily upon the porch. This brought Bertie back to the world of reality, and word was given to fetch

the gelding. The host was in no mood to part with them, and spoke of comfortable beds and breakfast as early

as they liked; but Bertie had become entirely responsible. Billy was helped in, Silas was liberally thanked,

and they drove away beneath the stars, leaving behind them golden opinions, and a host who decided not to

Bertie had forgotten, but the playful gelding had not. When they came abreast of that gate where Diggs of the

BirdinHand had met them at sunset, Bertie was only aware that a number of things had happened at once,

and that he had stopped the horse after about twenty yards of battle. Pride filled him, but emptied away in the

same instant, for a voice on the road behind him spoke inquiringly through the darkness.

There was no answer: but steps came along the road as Bertie checked and pacified the gelding. Then Billy

appeared by the wheel. "Poor Billy fell out," he said mildly. He held something up, which Bertie took. It had

been Billy's straw hat, now a brimless fabric of ruin. Except for smirches and one inexpressible rent which

dawn revealed to Bertie a little later, there were no further injuries, and Billy got in and took his seat quite

Bertie drove the gelding with a firm hand after this. They passed through the cool of the unseen meadow

swamps, and heard the sound of the hollow bridges as they crossed them, and now and then the gulp of some

pouring brook. They went by the few lights of Mattapan, seeing from some points on their way the beacons

of the harbor, and again the curving line of lamps that drew the outline of some village built upon a hill.

Dawn showed them Jamaica Pond, smooth and breezeless, and encircled with green skeins of foliage,

delicate and new. Here multitudinous birds were chirping their tiny, overwhelming chorus. When at length,

across the flat suburban spaces, they again sighted Memorial tower, small in the distance, the sun was

Confronted by this, thoughts of hitherto banished care, and of the morrow that was now today, and of

Philosophy 4 coming in a very few hours, might naturally have arisen and darkened the end of their pleasant

excursion. Not so, however. Memorial tower suggested another line of argument. It was Billy who spoke, as

Billy turned his head and looked suspiciously at Bertie. "What did I do?" he asked.

"Phew!" went Bertie. "Well, I don't, either. Didn't see it. Saw the consequences, though. Don't you remember

Billy consulted his recollections with care: they seemed to break off at the champagne. That was early. Bertie

was astonished. Did not Billy remember singing "Brace up and dress the Countess," and "A noble lord the

Earl of Leicester"? He had sung them quite in his usual manner, conversing freely between whiles. In fact, to

see and hear him, no one would have suspected "It must have been that extra silverfizz you took before

dinner," said Bertie. "Yes," said Billy;" that's what it must have been." Bertie supplied the gap in his

memory,a matter of several hours, it seemed. During most of this time Billy had met the demands of each

moment quite like his usual agreeable selfa sleepwalking state. It was only when the hair incident was

reached that his conduct had noticeably crossed the line. He listened to all this with interest intense.

Thus discoursing, they reached Harvard Square. Not your Harvard Square, gentle reader, that place populous

with careless youths and careful maidens and reticent persons with books, but one of sleeping windows and

clear, cool air and few sounds; a Harvard Square of emptiness and conspicuous sparrows and milk wagons

and early streetcar conductors in long coats going to their breakfast; and over all this the sweetness of the

As the gelding turned down toward Pike's, the thin old church clock struck. "Always sounds," said Billy,

"Walk close behind me," said Billy, as they came away from the livery stable. "Then they won't see the hole."

Bertie did so; but the hole was seen by the streetcar conductors and the milkmen, and these sympathetic

hearts smiled at the sight of the marching boys, and loved them without knowing any more of them than this.

One hour later they met. Shaving and a cold bath and summer flannels, not only clean but beautiful, invested

them with the radiant innocence of flowers. It was still too early for their regular breakfast, and they sat down

"Let's have another order," said Bertie. "These eggs are delicious." Each of them accordingly ate four eggs

"Oscar called five times," said Billy; and he threw down those cards which Oscar had so neatly written.

Now, inspiration is a strange thing, and less obedient even than love to the will of man. It will decline to

come when you prepare for it with the loftiest intentions, and, lo! at an accidental word it will suddenly fill

"By gum!" said he, laying his fork down. "Multiplicity of the ego. Look here. I fall out of a buggy and ask"

"I see a whole lot more," said Bertie, with excitement. "I had to tell you about your singing." And the two

burst into a flare of talk. To hear such words as cognition, attention, retention, entity, and identity, freely

mingled with such other words as silverfizz and false hair, brought John, the eggandcoffee man, as near

surprise as his impregnable nature permitted. Thus they finished their large breakfast, and hastened to their

notes for a last good bout at memorizing Epicharmos of Kos and his various brethren. The appointed hour

found them crossing the college yard toward a door inside which Philosophy 4 awaited them: three hours of

written examination! But they looked more roseate and healthy than most of the anxious band whose steps

were converging to that same gate of judgment. Oscar, meeting them on the way, gave them his deferential

"Good morning," and trusted that the gentlemen felt easy. Quite so, they told him, and bade him feel easy

about his pay, for which they were, of course, responsible. Oscar wished them good luck and watched them

go to their desks with his Iittle eyes, smiling in his particular manner. Then he dismissed them from his mind,

and sat with a faint remnant of his smile, fluently writing his perfectly accurate answer to the first question

Here is that paper. You will not be able to answer all the questions, probably, but you may be glad to know

1. Thales, Zeno, Parmenides, Heracleitos, Anaxagoras. State briefly the doctrine of each.

3. Thought=Being. Assuming this, state the difference, if any, between (1) memory and anticipation; (2) sleep

4. Democritus, Pythagoras, Bacon. State the relation between them. In what terms must the objective world

5. Experience is the result of time and space being included in the nature of mind. Discuss this.

6. Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensibus. Whose doctrine? Discuss it.

7. What is the inherent limitation in all ancient philosophy? Who first removed it?

8. Mind is expressed through what? Matter through what? Is speech the result or the cause of thought?

10. According to Plato, Locke,�Berkeley, where would the sweetness of a honeycomb reside? Where would

Ten questions, and no Epicharmos of Kos. But no examination paper asks everything, and this one did ask a

good deal. Bertie and Billy wrote the full time allotted, and found that they could have filled an hour more

without coming to the end of their thoughts. Comparing notes at lunch, their information was discovered to

have been lacking here and there. Nevertheless, it was no failure; their inner convictions were sure of fifty per

cent at least, and this was all they asked of the gods. "I was ripping about the ego," said Bertie. "I was rather

splendid myself," said Billy, "when I got going. And I gave him a huge steer about memory." After lunch

both retired to their beds and fell into sweet oblivion until seven o'clock, when they rose and dined, and after

Some six mornings later, when the Professor returned their papers to them, their minds were washed almost

as clear of Plato and Thales as were their bodies of yesterday's dust. The dates and doctrines, hastily

memorized to rattle off upon the great occasion, lay only upon the surface of their minds, and after use they

quickly evaporated. To their pleasure and most genuine astonishment, the Professor paid them high

compliments. Bertie's discussion of the double personality had been the most intelligent which had come in

from any of the class. The illustration of the intoxicated hackdriver who had fallen from his hack and

inquired who it was that had fallen, and then had pitied himself, was, said the Professor, as original and

perfect an illustration of our subjectiveobjectivity as he had met with in all his researches. And Billy's

suggestions concerning the inherency of time and space in the mind the Professor had also found very

striking and independent, particularly his reasoning based upon the wellknown distortions of time and space

which hashish and other drugs produce in us. This was the sort of thing which the Professor had wanted from

his students: free comment and discussions, the spirit of the course, rather than any strict adherence to the

letter. He had constructed his questions to elicit as much individual discussion as possible and had been

Yes, Bertie and Billy were astonished. But their astonishment did not equal that of Oscar, who had answered

many of the questions in the Professor's own language. Oscar received seventyfive per cent for this

achievementa good mark. But Billy's mark was eightysix and Bertie's ninety. "There is some mistake,"

said Oscar to them when they told him ; and he hastened to the Professor with his tale. "There is no mistake,"

said the Professor. Oscar smiled with increased deference. "But," he urged, "I assure you, sir, those young

men knew absolutely nothing. I was their tutor, and they knew nothing at all. I taught them all their

information myself." "In that case," replied the Professor, not pleased with Oscar's talebearing, "you must

Oscar never understood. But he graduated considerably higher than Bertie and Billy, who were not able to

discover many other courses so favorable to "orriginal rresearch" as was Philosophy 4. That is twenty years

ago, Today Bertie is treasurer of the New Amsterdam Trust Company, in Wall Street; Billy is

superintendent of passenger traffic of the New York and Chicago Air Line. Oscar is successful too. He has

acquired a lot of information. His smile is unchanged. He has published a careful work entitled "The Minor

OWEN WISTER was born in Philadelphia, July 14, 1860. He is the fourth generation of his family in direct

descent that has occupied itself with literature, both prose and verse. Among his forbears were members of

the famous Kemble family of actors, to which belonged Mrs. Siddons, and her gifted nieces Adelaide Kemble

(Mrs. Sartoris, singer, and author of "A Week in a French Country House") and Fanny Kemble, actress and

In 1892 he abandoned his chosen profession, the law, and began to devote himself steadily to imaginative

writing, which had already for some years previous to this occupied him from time to time. His first literary

production was entitled " Down in a Diving Bell," and was published in the boys' paper at St. Paul's School,

when he was thirteen years old. His first contribution to a standard magazine appeared in the Atlantic

Monthly when he was twentyone, before his graduation from Harvard, and was a poem addressed to

Beethoven. His latest published writing is a story entitled 'How the Energy was Conserved," in Collier's

Weekly, February 21, 1903. Mr. Wister's published volumes are : "'the Dragon of Wantley," 1892; "Red Men

and White," 1895; "Lin McLean," 1891; "Ulysses S. Grant," 1900; " The Jimmyjohn Boss," 1900; " The

The reception of his latest book has been increasingly enthusiastic. The Nation says:

"The dramatic thrill in it is very quick, and the outcome so satisfactory that one realizes an immense fear of

disappointment. 'The Virginian' is one of the most popular books of the season; it deserves to endure through

A large part of the appeal which his books make lies in their absolute truth to the life which he studied so

thoroughly, making fifteen separate journeys to the Western country within ten years. As all the critics say of

Mr. Hamblen Sears, reviewing " The Virginian" at length in the The Book Buyer, says that this is

"fiction of the sort we want. It tells us of the real man of America in such a human, such an accurate way that

we keep on saying, 'I've seen that a dozen times,' when not one of us would ever know he had seen it unless a

But almost equally strong is the charm of their perfect wholesomeness; along with the heartache of wide

spaces, it is true, comes the grim tragedy of primitive life before the law reached the plains, but through it all

is felt the sweep of Western winds, and sunny, exhilarating fresh air which, so the Boston Transcript declares,

"To read this book is an unalloyed delight. It carries you along with a rush and a sweep, and at the final page

you lay it dawn feeling full of the best brand of Western ozone, and almost sunburnt from perusing

"It is in humorspontaneous, genuine, contagious humorthat the book especially excels. Passages that

provoke hearty laughter are many, but that is a detail beside the main point, that this humor is of the essence

of American life, that it springs naturally from the situation, and because it is the real thing it is funny as

Yet there is far more to the book than jest or tragedy, or even its convincing picturesqueness, and pride of

"It is a love story which constitutes its burden, but it is the quaintest lovemakingexquisite in its humanity,

In England as in his own country, "The Virginian" has proved "very human, very satisfying." The

wellknown critic, Mr. W. D. Courtney, made it the text for a long and remarkably appreciative article on the

recent advance in American fiction. And "it is books like Mr. Wister's that make the true American," says the

"It is one of the best romances of the West in American literature, and by far the most striking picture of a