the world. I have noted that of my pupils, those who seemed the
laziest and the least enamoured of books are now rising to eminence
at the bar, in business, and in public life; the really promising
boys who took all the prizes are now able with difficulty to earn the
wages of a clerk in a summer hotel or a deck hand on a canal boat.

In 1899 I gave up school teaching in disgust, borrowing enough money
to live upon for a few months, and went to the University of Chicago
to study economics and political science. I was soon appointed to a
Fellowship in political economy, and by means of this and some
temporary employment by McGill University, I survived until I took
the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in 1903. The meaning of this
degree is that the recipient of instruction is examined for the last
time in his life, and is pronounced completely full. After this, no
new ideas can be imparted to him.

From this time, and since my marriage, which had occurred at this
period, I have belonged to the staff of McGill University, first as
lecturer in Political Science, and later as head of the department of
Economics and Political Science. As this position is one of the
prizes of my profession, I am able to regard myself as singularly
fortunate. The emolument is so high as to place me distinctly above
the policemen, postmen, street-car conductors, and other salaried
officials of the neighbourhood, while I am able to mix with the
poorer of the business men of the city on terms of something like
equality. In point of leisure, I enjoy more in the four corners of a
single year than a business man knows in his whole life. I thus have
what the business man can never enjoy, an ability to think, and, what
is still better, to stop thinking altogether for months at a time.