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"Surely, Grandfather," replied the youth. But already the elder's eyes were turning toward that pile of papers on his desk.

The other two went out and got into the car, and Robbie started to drive. Lanny waited for him to speak; then he discovered that the vibration of the seat was not from the engine, but was his father shaking with laughter.

"Did I do the right thing, Robbie?"

"Grand, kid, perfectly grand!" Robbie shook some more, and then asked: "Whatever put it into your head to talk?"

"Did I say too much?"

"It was elegant conversation - but what made you think of it?" "Well, I'll tell you. I just decided that people aren't kind enough to each other." The father thought that over. "Maybe it was worth trying," he admitted.

2 0

The Pierian Spring

I

NORMAN HENRY HARPER was the name of Lanny's tutor. He didn't in the least resemble the elegant and easygoing Mr. Elphinstone, nor yet the happy-go-lucky Jerry Pendleton. He was a professional man, and performed his duties with dignity. He prepared young men to pass examinations. He already knew about the examinations; he found out about each young man as quickly as possible, and then, presto - A plus В equals C - the young man had passed the examination. To the resolution of this formula Mr. Harper devoted his exclusive attention; his equipment and procedure were streamlined, constructed upon scientific principles, as much so as a Budd machine gun.

Nor was this comparison fantastic; on the contrary, the more you considered it, the more apposite it appeared. Experts on military science had been writing for decades about the perpetual war going on between gunmakers and armorplate makers; and in the same way there were educators, whose business it was to cram knowledge into the minds of youth, and there was youth, perversely resisting this procиss, seeking every device to "get by."

The educators had invented examinations, and the students were trying to circumvent them. Being provided by their parents with large sums of money, it was natural that they should use it to get expert help in this never-ceasing war. And so had developed the profession of tutoring.

This was America that Lanny had come to live in, and he wanted to know all about it. He listened to what Mr. Harper said, and afterwards put his mind on it and tried to figure out what it meant. A young man wanted to get into "prep school" as quickly as possible, in order that he might get through "prep school" as quickly as possible, in order that he might get into college as quickly as possible, in order that he might get out of college as quickly as possible. Mr. Harper didn't say any of that - for the reason that it didn't need saying. If it wasn't so, what was he here for?

Mr. Harper was about forty years of age, a brisk and businesslike person who might have been one of the Budd salesmen; he was getting bald, and plastered what hairs were left very carefully over the top of his head. For about half his life he had been studying college entrance examinations. It would be an exaggeration to say that he could tell you every question which had been asked in any college of the United States during twenty years; but his knowledge approached that encyclopedic character. He knew the personalities of the different professors, and what exam questions they had used for the last few years, and so he could make a pretty good guess what questions were due for another turn. He would hold up his hand in the middle of a conversation; no, no use to know that, they never asked anything like that.

Just recently had come a revolution in Mr. Harper's profession. The educational authorities had got together and set up a body called the College Entrance Examination Board, which was going to hold uniform examinations all over the country, good for any college the student might select. There were a quarter of a million college students, and six times as many high school students, so of course they had to be handled on a mass-production basis. It was part of the procиss of standardizing America; everybody was eating corn flakes out of the same kind of package, and all students of the year 1917 were going to get into college because they had read Washington Irving's Alhambra and George Washington's Farewell Address.

Lanny Budd was, so Mr. Harper declared, the most complicated problem he had ever tackled; he became quite enthusiastic over him, like a surgeon over an abdominal tumor with fascinating complications. From the point of view of the College Entrance Examination Board, Lanny quite literally didn't know anything. One by one the youth brought his burnt offerings and his wave offerings to the educational high priest and saw them rejected. Music? No, there are no credits for music. Greek dramatists? They teach those after you get into college, if at all. The same with Stendhal and Montaigne and Corneille and so on. Moliere, now, they use Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme - are you sure you remember the plot? Advanced French will count three units out of the fifteen you must have-but are you sure you can pass advanced French?

"Well, I've spoken French all my life," said Lanny, bewildered.

"I know; but you won't be asked to speak it, and very few of your examiners could understand you if you did. How do you say 'a tired child'?"

"Un enfant fatigu й ."

"And how do you say 'a beautiful day'?"

"Un beau jour."

"Well, now, why do you put one adjective ahead of the noun and the other after it?"

The uneducated youth looked blank. "I really don't know," said he. "I just do it."

"Exactly. But the examination paper will ask you to state the rule, or give the list of exceptions, or whatever it may be. And what will you do?"

"I guess I'll have to go back to France," said Lanny.

II

Mr. Harper decided that by heroic efforts it might be possible for this eccentric pupil to be got ready for the third year of prep school in the fall. Private academies were not so crowded as public high schools, and were better able to handle exceptional cases. But the first thing was to buckle down to plane and solid geometry, and to ancient and medieval history. Yes, said Mr. Harper, Sophocles and Euripides might help, but what really counted was facts. If a candidate were to tell a board of examiners that the Greek spirit was basically one of tragedy, how would they know whether he was spoofing them? But if he said that the naval battle of Salamis was won in the year 480 в.с. by the Athenian Themistocles, there was something that couldn't be faked.

"All right," Lanny said, "I'll go to it." That was what his father wanted, and his grandfather, and his stepmother; that was the test of character, the way to get on in America. So he put his textbooks on the little table by the open window of his room, with the door shut so that nobody would disturb him, and set to work to ram the contents of those books into his mind - names, places, and dates, and no foolish unprofitable flights of the imagination; rules, formulas, and facts, and no superfluous emotions of pity or terror.

The only company he had was the mocking-bird. This slender and delicate creature, gray with a little white, liked to sit on the topmost spray of the cherry tree and pour out its astonishing volume of song. A mystery when it slept; for no matter how late Lanny might work, it was singing in the moonlight, and if he opened his eyes at dawn, it was already under full steam. It imitated the cries of all the other birds; it said "meeauw" like the catbird, and "flicker, flicker, flicker," like the big yellow-hammer. But mostly it improvised. Of course it said no words, because it couldn't form the consonants; but as you listened you were impelled to make up words to correspond to its rhythm and melody. Sometimes they came tripping fast: "Sicady, sicady, sicady, sicady." Then the singer would stop, and and say very deliberately: "Peanuts first. Peanuts first."