Two Sides to It.

Otago Witness, Issue 2363, 8 June 1899, Page 60

Two Sides to It.

" My boy," said Mr Blykins severely, " I am disappointed. Very much disappointed." His son ventured no comment, but the expression of his face denoted sympathy.

" Here you are, in your teens, and yoil haven't got through either the Iliad or the iEneid. Your ignorance of the Latin and Greek classics is deplorable." . "I've studied them all I .could," was the answer. ,

No doubt; no doubt. But it's the way of the present generation. When I was a boy we could parse and construe Latin verse by the time we were 15 years of age. And I was reading Euripides before I was 17. The people could talk in Latin the same as we talk English, and they all had the classics at their tongues' end." '

"I know it," • said\ the boy sadly. "I've read about 'em. But you ought' not to overlook the fact that those people had a great advantage over us. All they h,ad to learn was what had happened up to their time, and then they had nothing to do except to study their Greek and Latin. They, didn't have to study the map of Africa so much as we do, or follow the Eastern Question so closely. They weren't obliged- to find~«Ht all about Cecil Rhodes, President Kruger, the German Emperor", and the Rontgen rays, nor to gauge what Japan's status will be in the next century. They weren't expecte # d to keep track of what • Aguinaldo is going'to do next, and whether America ought to take the Philippines, and what players tha big football clubs have bought or sold. They had' everything all laid out for them, and they didn't have to study timetables or learn all about bicycles and motor eara and the conditions of the Chinese Emperor's health. I'm -willing to admit we aren't as clever in Latin and Greek as boys were a century or two ago ;' but I can't help thinking there are extenuating circumstances."