Of course I know what the graduate meant.  I myself, though I had not seen Oxford nor Cambridge, was in truth comparing Columbia with my dream of Oxford and Cambridge, to her disadvantage.  I was capable of saying to myself:  “All this is terribly new.  All this lacks tradition.”  Criticism fatuous and mischievous, if human!  It would be as sapient to imprison the entire youth of a country until it had ceased to commit the offense of being young.  Tradition was assuredly not apparent in the atmosphere of Columbia.  Moreover, some of her architecture was ugly.  On the other hand, some of it was beautiful to the point of nobility.  The library, for instance:  a building in which no university and no age could feel anything but pride.  And far more important than stone or marble was the passionate affection for Columbia which I observed in certain of her sons who had nevertheless known other universities.  A passionate affection also perhaps brought into being since 1893, but not to be surpassed in honest fervency and loyalty by influences more venerable!

Columbia was full of piquancies for me.  It delighted me that the Dean of Science was also consulting engineer to the university.  That was characteristic and fine.  And how splendidly unlike Oxford!  I liked the complete life-sized railroad locomotive in the engineering-shops, and the Greek custom in the baths; and the students’ notion of coziness in the private dens full of shelves, photographs, and disguised beds; and the visibility of the president; and his pronounced views as to the respective merits of New York newspapers; and the eagerness of a young professor of literature in the Faculty Club to defend against my attacks English Professor A.C.  Bradley.  I do believe that I even liked the singular sight of a Chinaman tabulating from the world’s press, in the modern-history laboratory, a history of the world day by day.  I can hardly conceive a wilder, more fearfully difficult way of trying to acquire the historical sense than this voyaging through hot, fresh newspapers, nor one more probably destined to failure (I should have liked to see some of the two-monthly resumes which students in this course are obliged to write); but I liked the enterprise and the originality and the daring of the idea; I liked its disdain of tradition.  And, after all, is it weirder than the common traditional method?

[Illustration:  UNIVERSITY BUILDINGS—­UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA]

To the casual visitor, such as myself, unused either to universities or to the vastness of the American scale, Columbia could be little save an enormous and overwhelming incoherence.  It so chiefly remains in my mind.  But the ingenious humanity running through the whole conception of it was touching and memorable.  And although I came away from my visit still perfectly innocent of any broad theory as to ultimate educational values in America, I came away also with a deeper and more reassuring conviction