Читать книгу The Goose-step: A Study of American Education онлайн

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Shortly after this Spingarn incident President Butler completed the tenth year of his administration at Columbia, and a banquet was held at the Hotel Astor, attended by some two hundred members of the faculty. “It was an evening of much felicitation,” the New York “Times” reported (May 16, 1911), but there were “almost imperceptible references” to the recent conflicts. The “Times” report goes on to quote some jovial remarks by Professor Seligman, head of the department of political science. I quote:

Prof. Seligman regaled the diners with some anecdotes of the days when Dr. Butler was an undergraduate. He told of a student to whom was spared the embarrassment of reciting by pulling the gong and getting the class dismissed. He said he did not know who that student was, but admitted that he had his suspicions, as he did in the case of the same student getting to the head of his class by making a ten out of his zero on the professor’s record.

The above anecdote proves once more the ancient truth, that the child is father to the man; it would seem that by careful watching of one’s classmates one can pick out those students who are destined to grow up into college presidents who do not always tells the truth.