Frenzied Fiction, Stephen Leacock [books to read in a lifetime txt] 📗

modern students are, I thought to myself. In my time we used to go back to college as to a treadmill.

“I know that,” I said, “but what I mean is that college, after all, is a pretty hard grind. Things like mathematics and Greek are no joke, are they? In my day, as I remember it, we used to think spherical trigonometry about the hardest stuff of the lot.”

She looked dubious.

“I didn’t elect mathematics,” she said.

“Oh,” I said, “I see. So you don’t have to take it. And what have you elected?”

“For this coming half semester—that’s six weeks, you know—I’ve elected Social Endeavour.”

“Ah,” I said, “that’s since my day, what is it?”

“Oh, it’s awfully interesting. It’s the study of conditions.”

“What kind of conditions?” I asked.

“All conditions. Perhaps I can’t explain it properly. But I have the prospectus of it indoors if you’d like to see it. We take up Society.”

“And what do you do with it?”

“Analyse it,” she said.

“But it must mean reading a tremendous lot of books.”

“No,” she answered. “We don’t use books in this course. It’s all Laboratory Work.”

“Now I am mystified,” I said. “What do you mean by Laboratory Work?”

“Well,” answered the girl student with a thoughtful look upon her face, “you see, we are supposed to break society up into its elements.”

“In six weeks?”

“Some of the girls do it in six weeks. Some put in a whole semester and take twelve weeks at it.”

“So as to break up pretty thoroughly?” I said.

“Yes,” she assented. “But most of the girls think six weeks is enough.”

“That ought to pulverize it pretty completely. But how do you go at it?”

“Well,” the girl said, “it’s all done with Laboratory Work. We take, for instance, department stores. I think that is the first thing we do, we take up the department store.”

“And what do you do with it?”

“We study it as a Social Germ.”

“Ah,” I said, “as a Social Germ.”

“Yes,” said the girl, delighted to see that I was beginning to understand, “as a Germ. All the work is done in the concrete. The class goes down with the professor to the department store itself—”

“And then—”

“Then they walk all through it, observing.”

“But have none of them ever been in a departmental store before?”

“Oh, of course, but, you see, we go as Observers.”

“Ah, now, I understand. You mean you don’t buy anything and so you are able to watch everything?”

“No,” she said, “it’s not that. We do buy things. That’s part of it. Most of the girls like to buy little knick-knacks, and anyway it gives them a good chance to do their shopping while they’re there. But while they are there they are observing. Then afterwards they make charts.”

“Charts of what?” I asked.

“Charts of the employes; they’re used to show the brain movement involved.”

“Do you find much?”

“Well,” she said hesitatingly, “the idea is to reduce all the employes to a Curve.”

“To a Curve?” I exclaimed, “an In or an Out.”

“No, no, not exactly that. Didn’t you use Curves when you were at college?”

“Never,” I said.

“Oh, well, nowadays nearly everything, you know, is done into a Curve. We put them on the board.”

“And what is this particular Curve of the employe used for?” I asked.

“Why,” said the student, “the idea is that from the Curve we can get the Norm of the employe.”

“Get his Norm?” I asked.

“Yes, get the Norm. That stands for the Root Form of the employe as a social factor.”

“And what can you do with that?”

“Oh, when we have that we can tell what the employe would do under any and every circumstance. At least that’s the idea—though I’m really only quoting,” she added, breaking off in a diffident way, “from what Miss Thinker, the professor of Social Endeavour, says. She’s really fine. She’s making a general chart of the female employes of one of the biggest stores to show what percentage in case of fire would jump out of the window and what percentage would run to the fire escape.”

“It’s a wonderful course,” I said. “We had nothing like it when I went to college. And does it only take in departmental stores?”

“No,” said the girl, “the laboratory work includes for this semester ice-cream parlours as well.”

“What do you do with them?”

“We take them up as Social Cells, Nuclei, I think the professor calls them.”

“And how do you go at them?” I asked.

“Why, the girls go to them in little laboratory groups and study them.”

“They eat ice-cream in them?”

“They have to,” she said, “to make it concrete. But while they are doing it they are considering the ice-cream parlour merely as a section of social protoplasm.”

“Does the professor go?” I asked.

“Oh, yes, she heads each group. Professor Thinker never spares herself from work.”

“Dear me,” I said, “you must be kept very busy. And is Social Endeavour all that you are going to do?”

“No,” she answered, “I’m electing a half-course in Nature Work as well.”

“Nature Work? Well! Well! That, I suppose, means cramming up a lot of biology and zoology, does it not?”

“No,” said the girl, “it’s not exactly done with books. I believe it is all done by Field Work.”

“Field Work?”

“Yes. Field Work four times a week and an Excursion every Saturday.”

“And what do you do in the Field Work?”