I confess, with something of a shock, that essentially I am like the rest of these people.  The reason I am not interested in my country and my city is because, by reason of my financial and social independence, they have ceased to be my city and country.  I should be just as comfortable if our Government were a monarchy.  It really is nothing to me whether my tax rate is six one-hundredths of one per cent higher or lower, or what mayor rules in City Hall.

So long as Fifth Avenue is decently paved, so that my motor runs smoothly when I go to the opera, I do not care whether we have a Reform, Tammany or Republican administration in the city.  So far as I am concerned, my valet will still come into my bedroom at exactly nine o’clock every morning, turn on the heat and pull back the curtains.  His low, modulated “Your bath is ready, sir,” will steal through my dreams, and he will assist me to rise and put on my embroidered dressing gown of wadded silk in preparation for another day’s hard labor in the service of my fellowmen.  Times have changed since my father’s frugal college days.  Have they changed for better or for worse?

Of one thing I am certain—­my father was a better-educated man than I am.  I admit that, under the circumstances, this does not imply very much; but my parent had, at least, some solid ground beneath his intellectual feet on which he could stand.  His mind was thoroughly disciplined by rigid application to certain serious studies that were not selected by himself.  From the day he entered college he was in active competition with his classmates in all his studies, and if he had been a shirker they would all have known it.

In my own case, after I had once matriculated, the elective system left me free to choose my own subjects and to pursue them faithfully or not, so long as I could manage to squeak through my examinations.  My friends were not necessarily among those who elected the same courses, and whether I did well or ill was nobody’s business but my own and the dean’s.  It was all very pleasant and exceedingly lackadaisical, and by the time I graduated I had lost whatever power of concentration I had acquired in my preparatory schooling.  At the law school I was at an obvious disadvantage with the men from the smaller colleges which still followed the old-fashioned curriculum and insisted on the mental discipline entailed by advanced Greek, Latin, the higher mathematics, science and biology.

In point of fact I loafed delightfully for four years and let my mind run absolutely to seed, while I smoked pipe after pipe under the elms, watching the squirrels and dreaming dreams.  I selected elementary—­almost childlike—­courses in a large variety of subjects; and as soon as I had progressed sufficiently to find them difficult I cast about for other snaps to take their places.  My bookcase exhibited a collection of primers on botany, zooelogy and geology, the fine arts, music, elementary French and German, philosophy, ethics, methaphysics, architecture, English composition, Shakspere, the English poets and novelists, oral debating and modern history.