"A HICK COLLEGE"

Mr. Harkness and Mr. Duke passed by on the other side, as far as Piedmont College in George is concerned. No heraldic crests adorn the converted livery stable which serves as its recitation hall or the regenerated Chautauqua hall which is its chapel. Professor's get part of their meagre salaries in the form of peaches, potatoes, hams, or firewood from the college farm, and a complicated system of barter enables a farmer to pay his son's bill with so many quarts worth of tuition.

Scarcely less picturesque than its monetary customs are some evidences of the spirit of Piedmont. The place is an almost unique museum of Victorian morals. The faculty allows no dancing "because the trustees wouldn't hear of it." The trustees protest their indifference but say that "the parents would be outraged." Smoking is forbidden for girls and is a privilege in which men can indulge only in furtive privacy. The students are herded to church twice each Sunday.

Wendell Brooks Phillips, a former Harvard instructor, who describes Piedmont in the current Atlantic Monthly, admits that the "usual Southern student is much more innocent of knowledge than the Northerner of corresponding position," but believes in his "unspoiled and eager teachableness." An eloquent testimonial of the kind of education which Piedmont gives is provided in Professor Phillips' account of weekends in his mountain cabin where students help him bake corn pone and listen to passages from Walt Whitman.

Piedmont is not just a curious antique. Professor Phillips has refused to be weaned away from "the land of the hicks" and believes heartily in the college's accomplishment. That Piedmont does not come within gunshot of Dr. Flexner's ideal of a university really makes no difference. Georgia farmers don't ask that their doctor or lawyer be a scholar. Without pretending to reach the intellectual level of a great university, Piedmont gives a sound general education, and one surely richer in human values than many more sophisticated colleges can give.