"PEACE, FOOL!"

He was waiting in the office when we came back. He was an old man with long hair and he mumbled. But he spoke American.

"I was waiting" he said. "They told me you had a class."

"Quite true," we were cheerful, "but the professor cut."

"When will you mob him?" he asked, interested. It was then that we put him down as an idiot.

"Why should we mob him?"

"We used to." He seemed to enjoy the memory, for his old gums showed slightly. And then it was our turn to be polite as we asked just when and where.

"In Paris," he said, "a few hundred years ago." He was a genial liar. There was a pause. He broke it quietly.

"The Employment Office sent me down here. I was looking for a job."

Luckily it is possible to be businesslike even with an idiot and a liar, so we asked him his name.

"The Pilgrim of Infirmity will do," he said. And in truth he looked weak.

"Profession?"

"Thinking."

It hardly sounded like a compliment from the office but we tried again with "Expert in anything?"

"In Universals."

The efficiency method was getting us nowhere, so we shifted to cordiality and asked him "had he been in town long."

"A few days" was the reply, almost an eager one. "It's been very interesting. I've been talking to several students." (The word sounded a little odd, but he used it quite calmly.) "And they're a curious herd" he continued. "Very prepositional."

We waited.

"They're all 'out for' something or 'on' something. One was out for hockey, another was on the 'Dean's List', another on 'probation', and a profane young man swore he was on the skids."

That was the only time we laughed. "But weren't you 'on' anything in Paris?" we had to ask.

His reply was rather chilling. "On my own," he said.

"Or out for anything?"

"For myself and knowledge," he added, but it was no afterthought. "We were all of us seeking learning--like Paracolsus."

We had to remind him that all this had been changed. "There's more than just book-learning in a college" we pointed out. "You meet people--see life."

He sneered something about that, and then: "It will change back," he said. "History repeats itself. It stutters badly sometimes, but it always repeats itself in the end. More and more students will come, more than ever before. And they will come for learning. The town will be silent in the day time with the silence of work. The night will roar with play."

He was obviously beyond himself, and we were angry. "It will not. There are better things to do. What of all the activities? What of--this?" We looked about us happily, but he lost our note of pride.

"They will stay just the same," he admitted, not gloomily. "But the young men will learn--all the young men who can."

This of course was demned foolishness. There has to be limitation somewhere or...A quarter of each class is on probation now and the Dean's Office is overworked as it is, looking after them. We told him so, but it meant nothing to him.

"Gone," he murmured, "they'll all be gone. I don't know what they are but they'll all be gone, all these little things. They'll have no use. All a university needs is men to teach and room to teach in--and books. The students will come, thousands of them. They will eat where they can, live where they can, work as they choose and stay or go as they like. Some will go. Some will stay and a degree will be an award of honor. It was all better so and it will be so again..." The rest was lost.

"But what of the man on probation? How about hour exams? We need them to keep us up to scratch. You aren't going to abolish all those? We need help. You talk about students! What will happen to us?" We were desperate in the face of this fool.

But he only mumbled something that sounded like "nobody cares."--We didn't really hear so we couldn't hit him. Instead, we showed him the door.