VARIETY
REPORT FROM THE
ACADEMY:
THE AGE OF RETIREMENT
Professor Hicks did not
like people, but least of all Archi–
bald. He had learned to tolerate
much and had learned that all peo–
ple are queer but that the students
who settled in the sociology depart–
ment were even more queer. He
had the feeling that his department
was the intellectual rubbish heap
of the University although he
sometimes conceded that he was
myopic and that a few dullards
missed him each year. That he at–
tributed to chance. The typical so–
ciology student had bumbled about
for years in a dance band, sold in–
surance, served his term either in
prison or divinity school and had
decided finally before the age of
forty to get a doctorate at all costs.
The typical student liked people,
all people, which Professor Hicks
felt was another way of saying that
one liked to tell them what to do,
how to live and how to bring up
their children so that they too
would play in a dance band, sell
insurance, go to divinity school or
prison and finally enroll in soci–
ology. Archibald Bently was that
kind of student, but it was not
even that Archibald was usual,
thought Hicks.
It
was that he was
like a leech. For three years he had
taken courses, written all the re-
quired papers, sat through all the
seminars, swallowed and regurgit–
ated ideas willy-nilly even when
contradictory, and finally after vol–
umes of correspondence establish–
ing that Archibald was one hun–
dred percent American, that he
went to a Protestant church, cursed
only rarely, smoked only rarely and
drank never, found himself a job
as Professor of Sociology in a
teacher's college. And now exactly
a year after he'd finished his course
work he was handing in the final
draft of his thesis.
Professor Hicks lighted his pipe
and settled back in his chair.
In
his younger days he had looked
like a frightfully intellectual frog
with his bug eyes and thick horn
rimmed glasses, but now that his
hair had turned white and bristly
he appeared quite dignified. He read
through the bibliography. Not one
big name in the field was excluded.
Archibald had them all. He looked
at the last page with the number
495 in the middle of the top mar–
gin, and he read the foreword.
"This is a timely study in this day
of crowded living." Hicks grunted.
He knew exactly what Archibald
would have to say on the subject.
"What the world needs is team–
work, growing from the group ex–
perience in the community and
spreading in ever widening circles
until it embraces the whole inter–
national scene." Yes, he knew
Archibald. He'd said on every oc–
casion when the baby refused his
spinach or when the mayor de-
