Those things for which the most money is demanded are never
the things which the student most wants. Tuition, for instance, is
an important item in the term bill, while for the far more valuable
education which he gets by associating with the most cultivated of
his contemporaries no charge is made. The mode of founding a
college is, commonly, to get up a subscription of dollars and cents,
and then, following blindly the principles of a division of labor to
its extreme -- a principle which should never be followed but with
circumspection -- to call in a contractor who makes this a subject
of speculation, and he employs Irishmen or other operatives actually
to lay the foundations, while the students that are to be are said
to be fitting themselves for it; and for these oversights successive
generations have to pay. I think that it would be better than this,
for the students, or those who desire to be benefited by it, even to
lay the foundation themselves. The student who secures his coveted
leisure and retirement by systematically shirking any labor
necessary to man obtains but an ignoble and unprofitable leisure,
defrauding himself of the experience which alone can make leisure
fruitful.
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