Owen Wister

“ Twenty minutes later they were seated behind the black gelding and bound on their journey in search of the bird-in-Hand. Their notes in Philosophy 4 were stowed under the buggy-seat.
“Did Oscar see you?” Bertie inquired.
“Not he,” cried Billy, joyously.
“Oscar will wonder,” said Bertie; and he gave the black gelding a triumphant touch with the whip.
You see, it was Oscar that had made them run go; or, rather, it was Duty and Fate walking in Oscar’s displeasing likeness. Nothing easier, nothing more reasonable, than to see the tutor and tell him they should not need him to-day. ”

“ Duality of the ego.”
“Subject and object,” said Billy. “Perfectly true, and very queer when you try to think of it. Wonder how far it goes? Of course, one can explain the body’s being an object to the brain inside it. That’s mind and matter over again. But when my own mind and thought, can become objects to themselves—I wonder how far that does go?” he broke off musingly. “What useless stuff!” he ended.
“Gentlemen,” said Oscar, who had been listening to them with patient, Oriental diversion, “I—”
“Oh,” said Bertie, remembering him. “Look here. We mustn’t keep you up. ”

“ You’re saving our lives. Ten to-morrow for a grand review of the whole course.”
“And the multiplicity of the ego?” inquired Oscar.
“Oh, I forgot. Well, it’s too late tonight. Is it much? Are there many dates and names and things?”
“It is more of a general inquiry and analysis,” replied Oscar. “But it is forty pages of my notes.” And he smiled.
“Well, look here. It would be nice to have to-morrow clear for review. We’re not tired. You leave us your notes and go to bed.”
Oscar’s hand almost moved to cover and hold his precious property, for this instinct was the deepest in him. ”

“ If you would gauge the intelligence of our population, inquire your way in a rural neighborhood. With these directions they took up their journey after an hour and a half,—a halt made chiefly for the benefit of the black gelding, whom they looked after as much as they did themselves. For a while they discussed club matters seriously, as both of them were officers of certain organizations, chosen so on account of their recognized executive gifts. These questions settled, they resumed the lighter theme of philosophy, and made it (as Billy observed) a near thing for the Causal law. ”

“ In the hours of trial they would often express their education thus.
“Philosophers I have met,” murmured Billy, with scorn And they ate silently for some time.
“There’s one thing that’s valuable,” said Bertie next. “When they spring those tricks on you about the flying arrow not moving, and all the rest, and prove it all right by logic, you learn what pure logic amounts to when it cuts loose from common sense. And Oscar thinks it’s immense. We shocked him.”
“He’s found the Bird-in-Hand!” cried Billy, quite suddenly.
“Oscar?” said Bertie, with an equal shout.
“No, John. John has. ”

“ But for the successful explorer a dinner and wines were waiting at the Bird-in-Hand more delicious than anything outside of Paradise. You will realize, therefore, what a thing it was to have a room-mate who had attained. If Billy had not been so dog-tired last night, he would have sat up and made John tell him everything from beginning to end.
“Soft-shell crabs, broiled live lobster, salmon, grass-plover, dough-birds, and rum omelette,” he was now reciting to Bertie. ”

“ Billy had inquired of Bertie. “I’ll tell you,” said Bertie, “if you’ll tell me who Epicharmos of Kos was.” And upon this they embraced with helpless laughter. Then they reckoned up the hours left for them to learn Epicharmos of Kos in,—between Monday noon and Thursday morning at nine,—and their quailing chill increased. A tutor must be called in at once. So the grasshoppers, having money, sought out and quickly purchased the ant.
Closeted with Oscar and his notes, they had, as Bertie put it, salted down the early Greek bucks by seven on Monday evening. ”

“ These blithe grasshoppers had danced and sung away the precious storing season, and now that the bleak hour of examinations was upon them, their waked-up hearts had felt aghast at the sudden vision of their ignorance. It was on a Monday noon that this feeling came fully upon them, as they read over the names of the philosophers. Thursday was the day of the examination. ”

“ He asked, “How about Cambridge and a little Oscar to finish off with?” Bertie frowned. This would be failure. Was Billy willing to go back and face John the successful?
“It would only cost me five dollars,” said Billy.
“Ten,” Bertie corrected. He recalled to Billy the matter about the landlady’s hair.
“By Jove, that’s so!” cried Billy, brightening. It seemed conclusive. But he grew cloudy again the next moment. He was of opinion that one could go too far in a thing. ”

“ John found these cards when he came home to go to bed, and picked them up and stuck them ornamentally in Billy’s looking-glass, as a greeting when Billy should return, The eight o’clock visit was the last that Oscar paid to the locked door, He remained through the evening in his own room, studious, contented, unventilated, indulging in his thick notes, and also in the thought of Billy’s and Bertie’s eleventh-hour scholarship, “Even with another day,” he told himself, “those young men could not have got fifty per cent,” In those times this was the passing mark. ”

“ Bertie and Billy were sophomores. They had been alive for twenty years, and were young. Their tutor was also a sophomore. He too had been alive for twenty years, but never yet had become young. Bertie and Billy had colonial names (Rogers, I think, and Schuyler) , but the tutor’s name was Oscar Maironi, and he was charging his pupils five dollars an hour each for his instruction. Do not think this excessive. Oscar could have tutored a whole class of irresponsibles, and by that arrangement have earned probably more ”

“ It helped him feel every day, as he stepped along to recitations with his elbow clamping his books against his ribs and his heavy black curls bulging down from his gray slouch hat to his collar, how meritorious he was compared with Bertie and Billy—with all Berties and Billies. He may have been. Who shall say? But I will say at once that chewing the cud of one’s own virtue gives a sour stomach.
Bertie’s and Billy’s parents owned town and country houses in New York. The parents of Oscar had come over in the steerage. Money filled the pockets of Bertie and Billy ”

“ The tutor turned his little eyes doubtfully upon the tennis boys, but answered, reciting the language of his notes: “The idealistic theory does not apply to the thinking ego, but to the world of external phenomena. The world exists in our conception of it. ”

“ There they sat, while their memories gripped the summarized list of facts essential, facts to be known accurately; the simple, solid, raw facts, which, should they happen to come on the examination paper, no skill could evade nor any imagination supply. But this study was no longer dry and dreadful to them: they had turned it to a sporting event. “What about Heracleitos?” Billy as catechist would put at Bertie. “Eternal flux,” Bertie would correctly snap back at Billy. ”

“ The instructor turned a few pages forward in the thick book of his own neat type-written notes and then resumed,—
“The self-knowledge of matter in motion.”
“Skip it,” put in the first tennis boy.
“We went to those lectures ourselves,” explained the second, whirling through another dishevelled notebook. “Oh, yes. Hobbes and his gang. There is only one substance, matter, but it doesn’t strictly exist. Bodies exist. We’ve got Hobbes. Go on.”
The instructor went forward a few pages more in his exhaustive volume. ”

“ What is the inherent limitation in all ancient philosophy? Who first removed it?
8. Mind is expressed through what? Matter through what? Is speech the result or the cause of thought?
9. Discuss the nature of the ego.
10. According to Plato, Locke, Berkeley, where would the sweetness of a honeycomb reside? Where would its shape? its weight? Where do you think these properties reside?
Ten questions, and no Epicharmos of Kos. But no examination paper asks everything, and this one did ask a good deal. ”

“ The tutor stood awhile, holding his notes and turning his little eyes this way and that. His young days had been dedicated to getting the better of his neighbor, because otherwise his neighbor would get the better of him. Oscar had never suspected the existence of boys like John and Bertie and Billy. ”

“ Thus the three remained, during what space of time is not known: the two upon the table, convalescent with relapses, and Billy like a seated idol, unrelaxed at his vigil. The party was seen through the windows by Silas, coming from the stable to inquire if the gelding should not be harnessed. Silas leaned his face to the pane, and envy spoke plainly in it. “O my! O my!” he mentioned aloud to himself. So we have the whole household: Mrs. Diggs reposing scornfully in an upper chamber; all parts of the tavern darkened, save the one lighted room ”

“ His massy hair had been yellow, his broad body must have weighed two hundred and fifty pounds, his face was canny, red, and somewhat clerical, resembling Henry Ward Beecher’s.
“Trout,” he said, pointing to a basket by the gate. “For your dinner. “Then he climbed heavily but skilfully down and picked up the basket and a rod. “Folks round here say,” said he, “that there ain’t no more trout up them meadows. ”

“ PHILOSOPHY 4
1. Thales, Zeno, Parmenides, Heracleitos, Anaxagoras. State briefly the doctrine of each.
2. Phenomenon, noumenon. Discuss these terms. Name their modern descendants.
3. Thought=Being. Assuming this, state the difference, if any, between (1) memory and anticipation; (2) sleep and waking.
4. Democritus, Pythagoras, Bacon. State the relation between them. In what terms must the objective world ultimately be stated? Why?
5. Experience is the result of time and space being included in the nature of mind. Discuss this. ”