The general subject was Labor-Problems.  The students had to read one book a week—­such books as Hart’s “Psychology of Insanity,” Keller’s “Societal Evolution,” Holt’s “Freudian Wish,” McDougall’s “Social Psychology,”—­two weeks to that,—­Lippmann’s “Preface to Politics,” Veblen’s “Instinct of Workmanship,” Wallas’s “Great Society,” Thorndike’s “Educational Psychology,” Hoxie’s “Scientific Management,” Ware’s “The Worker and his Country,” G.H.  Parker’s “Biology and Social Problems,” and so forth—­and ending, as a concession to the idealists, with Royce’s “Philosophy of Loyalty.”

One of the graduate students of the seminar wrote me:  “For three years I sat in his seminar on Labor-Problems, and had we both been there ten years longer, each season would have found me in his class.  His influence on my intellectual life was by far the most stimulating and helpful of all the men I have known. . . .  But his spirit and influence will live on in the lives of those who sat at his feet and learned.”

The seminar was too large, really, for intimate discussion, so after a few weeks several of the boys asked Carl if they could have a little sub-seminar.  It was a very rushed time for him, but he said that, if they would arrange all the details, he would save them Tuesday evenings.  So every Tuesday night about a dozen boys climbed our hill to rediscuss the subject of the seminar of that afternoon—­and everything else under the heavens and beyond.  I laid out ham sandwiches, or sausages, or some edible dear to the male heart, and coffee to be warmed, and about midnight could be heard the sounds of banqueting from the kitchen.  Three students told me on graduation that those Tuesday nights at our house had meant more intellectual stimulus than anything that ever came into their lives.

One of these boys wrote to me after Carl’s death:—­

“When I heard that Doc had gone, one of the finest and cleanest men I have ever had the privilege of associating with, I seemed to have stopped thinking.  It didn’t seem possible to me, and I can remember very clearly of thinking what a rotten world this is when we have to live and lose a man like Doc.  I have talked to two men who were associated with him in somewhat the same manner as I was, and we simply looked at one another after the first sentences, and then I guess the thoughts of a man who had made so much of an impression on our minds drove coherent speech away. . . .  I have had the opportunity since leaving college of experiencing something real besides college life and I can’t remember during all that period of not having wondered how Dr. Parker would handle this or that situation.  He was simply immense to me at all times, and if love of a man-to-man kind does exist, then I truthfully can say that I had that love for him.”

Of the letters received from students of those years I should like to quote a passage here and there.

An aviator in France writes:  “There was no man like him in my college life.  Believe me, he has been a figure in all we do over here,—­we who knew him,—­and a reason for our doing, too.  His loss is so great to all of us! . . .  He was so fine he will always push us on to finding the truth about things.  That was his great spark, wasn’t it?”