Education: Epitaph on Learning

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In any college, many and distinct are the categories among the undergraduates, ranging from the broad-backed footballers to the light-stepping, open-collared esthetes. But which is "the fruitiest group of all?"

"The richest, the ripest, the most inspiring and the fruitiest group of all, was the group of serious students who were social about it." That was the answer of a University of Pennsylvania 1929 graduate—Samuel Lipshutz.

Mr. Lipshutz categorized as follows: "The first group was the social group. Nice-young-men-from-good-families, who made up the more decorative part of the student body. . . . Group number two, quite as definite, was the wicked group— an off-colour mixture of boys from all races and all families, who sat in the rear of the rooms and cried their vices to each other . . . were still young enough to regard a prostitute as an adventure. . . . The third group was the group of serious students who were not social about it . . . went in for higher mathematics, and for chess, and for physics." Mr. Lipshutz made this analysis because he is a reader of Henry Louis ("Hatrack") Mencken's American Mercury and had read therein of two $500 prizes to be awarded for the best analysis of four years at college. The other prizewinner was Olive Brossow, this year's product of Northland College, Northland, Wis.

Drab, and more acidly Mercuric was Miss Brossow's paper: "Our family was . . . poor as Job's turkey . . . on a farm in what was then the backwoods in Central Wisconsin." To get enough money to go to college she did housework in Kenosha. "Arriving at Northland, I was sadly disappointed (in the buildings) . . . it is rather an honor to work one's own way than otherwise. . . . I have gotten everything out of college but a job. . . . I am financially embarrassed . . . I wonder, have I truly completed my college career 'with honor.' "

The $1,000 worth of Lipshutz and Brossow appeared in the October American Mercury.