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Taking a page from Thackeray in the reverse, the Professor of English at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology advised the graduating class to imitate the snob, not to ridicule or despise him. Perhaps this was simply Professor Rogers's way of startling the bourgeois young engineers. Or it may be that, as he intimated, they had been so long living under the shadow of Harvard's snobbery that a little irony had to be expended upon the contrast. Yet it was with a grave appearance of sincerity that he urged the graduates to study carefully the snob in order to discover from him the true rules of success in life. All the old maxims about working and waiting, study and industry, are to be thrown aside in favor of push, impudence, tuft-hunting, insolence and greed. And when challenged later about the soundness of this advice, Professor Rogers declared that he meant every bit of it and had not a word to retract. That would seem to make his circle of sarcasm completely rounded....
Indeed, it would seem that Professor Rogers should have directed his remarks not to the boys at the Massachusetts Tech, but to their parents. The latter will take a lot of converting before they consent to see their gilded youth start out on a career of extravagance and bumptiousness. It may even be the case that a purse-proud father would not be entirely happy to see his daughter become engaged to a snob of the purest water. If he had to make his choice between the two authorities, the chances are that he would prefer Thackeray to Professor Rogers. --New York Times.
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