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Leisurely they rode–stopping at times for several days at places where the food and drink were at their best, and the society sulphide. At nunneries and monasteries were always guest-chambers for the great, and they were usually occupied.

Thus it was that every church-house was a sort of university, depending of course on the soul-size of the Superior or Abbe. These constant journeyings and pilgrimages served in lieu of the daily paper, the Western Union Telegraph, and the telephone. Things have slipped back, I fear me, for now Mercury merely calls up his party on the long-distance, instead of making a personal visit–the Angel Gabriel as well. We save time, but we miss the personal contact.

The monastic impulse was founded on a human need. Like most good things, it has been sadly perverted; but the idea of a sanctuary for stricken souls–a place of refuge, where simplicity, service and useful endeavor rule–will never die from out the human heart. The hospice stands for hospitality, but we have now only a hotel and a hospital.

The latter stands for iodoform, carbolic acid and formaldehyde; the former often means gold, glitter, gluttony and concrete selfishness, with gout on one end, paresis at the other and Bright’s Disease between.

The hospice was a part of the monastery. It was a home for the homeless. There met men of learning–men of wit–men of brains and brawn. You entered and were at home. There was no charge–you merely left something for the poor.

Any man who has the courage, and sufficient faith in humanity to install the hospice system in America will reap a rich reward. If he has the same faith in his guests that Judge Lindsey has in his bad boys, he will succeed; but if he hesitates, defers, doubts, and begins to plot and plan, the Referee in Bankruptcy will beckon.

The early universities grew out of the monastic impulse. Students came and went, and the teachers were a part of a great itinerancy. Man is a migratory animal. His evolution has come about through change of environment. Transplantation changes weeds into roses, and the forebears of all the products of our greenhouses and gardens once grew in hedgerows or open fields, choked by unkind competition or trampled beneath the feet of the heedless.

The advantage of university life is in the transplantation. Get the boy out of his home environment; sever the cord that holds him to his “folks”; let him meet new faces, see new sights, hear new sermons, meet new teachers, and his efforts at adjustment will work for growth. Alexander Humboldt was right–one year at college is safer than four. One year inspires you–four may get you pot-bound with pedant prejudice.

The university of the future will be industrial–all may come and go. All men will be university men, and thus the pride in an imaginary proficiency will be diluted to a healthful attenuation. To work and to be useful–not merely to memorize and recite–will be the only initiation.

The professors will be interchangeable, and the rotation of intellectual crops will work for health, harmony and effectiveness.

The group, or college, will be the unit, not the family. The college was once a collection of men and women grouped for a mutual intellectual, religious or economic good.

To this group or college idea will we return.

Man is a gregarious animal, and the Christ-thought of giving all, and receiving all, some day in the near future will be found practical. The desire for exclusive ownership must be sloughed.

Universities devoted to useful work–art in its highest sense: head, hand and heart–will yet dot the civilized world. The hospice will return higher up the scale, and the present use of the word “hospitality” will be drowned in its pink tea, choked with cheese-wafers, rescued from the nervous clutch of the managing mama, and the machinations of the chaperone. A society built on the sands of silliness must give way to the universal university, and the strong, healthful, helpful, honest companionship and comradeship of men and women prevail.