【正文】 ng, and I am here to tell you that the business of the college is not only to train you, but to put you in touch with what the best human minds have thought. If you have no time for Shakespeare, for a basic look at philosophy, for the continuity of the fine arts, for that lesson of man39。m out to make money. I hope you make a lot of it, I told him, because you39。 I39。s work, what do you do with those other eight hours Let39。t jump the fence, or that your client doesn39。Unit1Another School Year — What For Let me tell you one of the earliest disasters in my career as a teacher. It was January of 1940 and I was fresh out of graduate school starting my first semester at the University of Kansas City. Part of the student body was a beanpole with hair on top who came into my class, sat down, folded his arms, and looked at me as if to say All right, teach me something. Two weeks later we started Hamlet. Three weeks later he came into my office with his hands on his hips. Look, he said, I came here to be a pharmacist. Why do I have to read this stuff And not having a book of his own to point to, he pointed to mine which was lying on the desk. New as I was to the faculty, I could have told this specimen a number of things. I could have pointed out that he had enrolled, not in a drugstoremechanics school, but in a college and that at the end of his course meant to reach for a scroll that read Bachelor of Science. It would not read: Qualified PillGrinding Technician. It would certify that he had specialized in pharmacy, but it would further certify that he had been exposed to some of the ideas mankind has generated within its history. That is to say, he had not entered a technical training school but a university and in universities students enroll for both training and education. I could have told him all this, but it was fairly obvious he wasn39。t going to be around long enough for it to matter. Nevertheless, I was young and I had a high sense of duty and I tried to put it this way: For the rest of your life, I said, your days are going to average out to about twentyfour hours. They will be a little shorter when you are in love, and a little longer when you are out of love, but the average will tend to hold. For eight of these hours, more or less, you will be asleep. Then for about eight hours of each working day you will, I hope, be usefully employed. Assume you have gone through pharmacy school — or engineering, or law school, or whatever — during those eight hours you will be using your professional skills. You will see to it that the cyanide stays out of the aspirin, that the bull doesn39。t go to the electric chair as a result of your inpetence. These are all useful pursuits. They involve skills every man must respect, and they can all bring you basic satisfactions. Along with everything else, they will probably be what puts food on your table, supports your wife, and rears your children. They will be your ine, and may it always suffice. But having finished the day39。s say you go home to your family. What sort of family are you raising Will the children ever be exposed to a reasonably penetrating idea at home Will you be presiding over a family that maintains some contact with the great democratic intellect Will there be a book in the house Will there be a painting a reasonably sensitive man can look at without shuddering Will the kids ever get to hear Bach That is about what I said, but this particular pest was not interested. Look, he said, you professors raise your kids your way。ll take care of my own. Me, I39。re going to be badly stuck for something to do when you39。s development we call history — then you have no business being in college. You are on your way to being that new species of mechanized savage, the pushbutton Neanderthal. Our colleges inevitably graduate a number of such life forms, but it cannot be said that they went to college。s spiritual resources. Most of these resources, both technical and spiritual, are stored in books. Books are man39。s mind. Through books you can acquire at least fragments of the mind and experience of Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare — the list is endless. For a great book is necessarily a gift。t read about it. He might have said that no one would ever manage to bee human if they hadn39。m sure, for the faculty of the liberal arts college and for the faculties of the specialized schools as well, when I say that a university has no real existence and no real purpose except as it succeeds in putting you in touch, both as specialists and as humans, with those human minds your human mind needs to include. The faculty, by its very existence, says implicitly: We have been aided by many people, and by many books, in our attempt to make ourselves some sort of storehouse of human experience. We are here to make available to you, as best we can, that expertise.Unit2Maheegun My Brother The year I found Maheegun, spring was late in ing. That day, I was spearing fish with my grandfather when I heard the faint crying and found the shivering wolf cub. As I bent down, he moved weakly toward me. I picked him up and put him inside my jacket. Little Maheegun gained strength after I got the first few drops of warm milk in him. He wiggled and soon he was full and warm. My grandfather finally agreed to let me keep him. That year, which was my 14th, was the happiest of my life. Not that we didn39。s sewing basket — which he upset, scattering thread and buttons all over the floor. At such times, she would chase him out with a broom and Maheegun would poke his head around the corner, waiting for things to quiet down. That summer Maheegun and I became hunting partners. We hunted the grasshoppers that leaped about like little rockets. And in the fall, after the first snow our games took us to the nearest meadows in search of field mice. By then, Maheegun was half grown. Gone was the puppywool coat. In its place was a handsome