A PROFESSOR SINGS THE BLUES

On his way to Mexico where he is to be dean of the department of English in the University of Mexico City, Dr. L. P. Finely, takes a final shot at American education. College students are an idle lot in his opinion. They have no taste for learning and little ability to acquire it. Seventy-five per cent of them cannot speak the English language correctly, while graduate students are "boys whose parents have enough money to keep them in college until the professors are tired of looking at them." Manicured and powdered, the youth of modern college life stirs Dr. Finley more than any revolution he may chance upon during his career in Mexico City. Only the girls are safe, for in each "the heart of a mother is not far beneath the surface." The doctor pins his only hope to their skirts, and probably has to reach to do that.

Surely the sadness of this heart panting after the waterbrooks of learning in the arid spaces of university life demands pity. To think that such sorrow can be held within one professorial form! Yet perhaps the doctor will soon have found his peace. The heart beneath the surface of some peon bodice may beat for the professor's learning. Some ruffian of the plains may seek wisdom at his fount. How fortunate he is to be removed from the mundane midst of American mediocrity. Now he can enjoy perfect English among virile types in a violent land. Then, when another agrarian movement robs Mexico of a delight in Shelley, and the bullets of the next candidate for the presidency penetrate the calm of Dr. Finlev's southern sanctum, he may prefer the powder of the northern classroom to the powder of his departed Utopia.