"THIRTY DAYS' FREE TRIAL"

"Vanity Fair", far from confining its distinguished attention to "In and About the Theatre", and "What the Well-Dressed Man Should Wear", has volunteeered some practical information. The "mail order colleges" are thoroughly investigated, and exposed in all their noisy pretentiousness. "The Master Key", "the Realization System". "The Power that Compels Success", all familiar enough to readers of popular magazines, promise wealth, personality, fame, anything in fact, for "Fifteen minutes a day", or a similar sacrifice. And all base their mysterious methods on a "secret power", comparable to the Philosopher's Stone.

Thousands of people, eager for success at a minimum cost, support these "institutions", for modern enlightenment has not yet replaced mediaeval superstition. A "royal road" to learning is still sought,--some uncanny alchemy to make knowledge grow where ignorance grew before. Strangely enough, many people would rather trust to the potency of some unknown agent, than rely on the well-proven prescription of self-denial and hard work.

But being educated, and therefore knowing one can get no more from anything than one puts in; college men are inclined to ridicule the simple folk who cling to these antiquated beliefs. They, of course, know that power, of any kind, must be developed by exercise, not by the system which "reconciles pragmatism and mysticism, which combines applied psychology and metaphysics, personal ethics and aethetics" as one advertisement says, or any other system which does not involve exertion. Yet even such intelligences occasionally backslide. The tutoring schools about the Square still have their devotees.