insincerity. A distinguished preacher was suggested for a service in the university.

"I will have nothing to do with it," said President Eliot; "the man is a liar.'

In another case a gentleman of great eminence was asked to deliver a course of lectures. The faculty was enthusiastic for having them printed.

"Hadn't we better hear these lectures first?" asked the President quietly. And the lectures never were printed.

He judged of men by their faces and also by another test. About a young scholar of rising reputation, who might be a suitable professor, he asked suddenly: "Is his wife a civilized person?" And another was passed over with the remark: "His wife is a shedevil."

Yet a young esthete was duly appointed despite the question, "Where did he get that sappy manner?” Dr. Eliot recognized that the sappy manner concealed solid worth. What he looked for were "the essentials of the academic character." And in a professor nothing else mattered. Also he had courage. It was not a small matter to refuse the honorary degree, which Harvard had, as a matter of course, conferred on each successive Governor of Massachusetts. No man save a great man would have stood up to one such Governor,

Benjamin F. Butler, as Eliot did in 1883, and rebuke his materialist view of education with the words:

"You must learn the eternal worth of character."

There was a roar of applause in the audience. The shot had struck straight home.

On his retirement as President of Harvard in 1909 Dr. Eliot was presented with a purse of $150,000. All manner of honors were showered upon him. President Taft asked him to go to London as American Ambassador, and it was hinted that President Wilson, four years later, renewed the suggestion. He preferred a personal liberty. He traveled widely.

"A HUMAN PURITAN'

Dr. Eliot's output of opinion is enormous. He has been for years a kind of unofficial writer of ethical editorials for a grateful press. Many of his most characteristic letters have appeared in The New York Times. The recent index in this office contains over 300 entries and covers an immense variety of subjects. What Dr. Eliot says as "a human Puritan" is never diffuse. It is always to the point. And it is always actuated by the highest motives. At the industrial conferences in Washington his grave impartiality produced a great impression with both capital and labor.

He is still as much as ever at work. He is still as keenly alive as ever to what is happening in the world.

He is still as eager as ever for new points of view. I have read hints that his tone is dictatorial, but I should have said that he is a most admirable listener and an adept in exchanging idea for idea.

"And now," he would say, "I am going to ask you some questions."

I

And they were very searching questions. He wanted to know why the British trade unions were Socialist while the American Federation of Labor was anti-Socialist; and he wanted also to know whether it was true that at Oxford and Cambridge the poor boy from the elementary school often did better in his examinations than the richer boy from Eton and Harrow. said that, so far I knew, this was certainly the case, but that sometimes the boy from Eton and Harrow, even if he had "fewer brains," did better than his more intellectual rival when it came to governing a colony. But I gathered that Dr. Eliot was on the side, not of the boy with birth, but of the boy with brains. And to all young people, his advice has been, "Look out, not in."

For as an educator, Dr. Eliot has always been fond of making his own phrases for his own ideas. "The new religion," he has said, "will not be based upon authority, either spiritual or temporal; the present generation is ready to be led, not driven." Hence,

he holds that "standardization has become a dangerous adversary of progress in both education and in

dustry;" and that, in particular, "a child should have no part in any machine industry indoors-never!" "Christ," he thinks, "will be the supreme teacher,' and "the church of the future will have more reverence for the personality of Jesus *** It will see neither deities nor demons in the forces and processes of nature. It will rob death of its terrors. It will dwell on goodness, life and truth. The brotherhood of men will be its outcome." "We must have," he says, "a large and democratic force to help preserve peace."

On universities, he declares that "nobody now accepts numbers as conclusive evidence of the prosperity of any of the several divisions of an American university." Indeed, he has even attacked football which he denounces as "fierce." Football is, he holds, "an undesirable game for gentlemen to play or for multitudes of spectators to watch. His prescription for health is; "How to live long-Go to church. Keep a clean heart and a good conscience. Give your mind exercise as well as your body-really think. Exercise regularly, eat in moderation, take a full allowance of sleep. Avoid indulgence in luxuries and the habitual use of any drug whatsoever-not only of alcohol, but of tobacco, tea and coffee.'

Indeed, his view of such matters is conservative. And two brief quotations will illustrate this; "Too

small a proportion of college women marry. Twentyfive years ago the sort of women who went to college were not the most attractive physically, however they may have been mentally, but now all is changed.' "I believe no restriction of the birth rate can be supported, either by morals or economics. The durable satisfactions of life depend upon having the normal number of children, and the normal number of children is five or six to the family. A mother should bear a child every two years."

Again; "Female teachers can never expect to be as highly rewarded as men teachers, since few women enter the profession of teaching with the idea of making it a life's work."

AGAINST RACE PREJUDICE

Our talk ranged, hither and thither, over the prospects of education. Was it true, I asked, that students graduating from high school had, as some have asserted, "the mentality of 14 years old," whatever that may be? Here also Dr. Eliot's views were clearly and alertly expressed, sometimes with a phrase which lacked nothing of forceful vigor. Broadly, I take it that he mistrusts "recommendations" from schools to universities as a substitute for examinations, and his firm faith in open competition was shown in what I took to be his profound disapproval of prejudices against particular races.