Conjure Wife by Fritz Leiber Page B

wished he had not gotten started on that “cussedness of things” notion. It stuck in his mind. He found himself puzzling over the merest trifles — such as the precise position of that idiotic cement dragon. Yesterday he remembered thinking that it was exactly in the middle of the descending roof ridge. But now he saw that it was obviously two thirds of the way down, quite near the architrave topping the huge useless Gothic gateway set between Estrey and Morton. Even a social scientist ought to have better powers of observation than that!
    The jangle of the phone coincided with the nine o’clock buzzer.
    “Professor Saylor?” Thompson’s voice was apologetic. “I’m sorry to bother you again, but I just got another inquiry from one of the trustees — Liddell, this time. Concerning an informal address you were supposed to have delivered at about the same time as that… er… party. The topic was ‘What’s wrong with College Education.’”
    “Well, what about it? Are you implying there’s nothing wrong with college education, or that the topic is taboo?”
    “Oh, no, no, no, no. But the trustee seemed to think that you were making a criticism of Hempnell.”
    “Of small colleges of the same type as Hempnell, yes. Of Hempnell specifically, no.”
    “Well, he seemed to fear it might have a detrimental effect on enrollment for next year. Spoke of several friends of his with children of college age as having heard your address and being unfavorably impressed.”
    “Then they were supersensitive.”
    “He also seemed to think you had made a slighting reference to President Pollard’s… en… political activities.”
    “I’m sorry but I have to get along to a class now.”
    “Very well,” said Thompson, and hung up. Norman grimaced. The cussedness of things certainly wasn’t to be compared with the cussedness of people! Then he jumped up and hurried off to his “Primitive Societies.”
    Gracine Pollard was absent, he noted with an inward grin, wondering if yesterday’s lecture had been too much for her warped sense of propriety. But even the daughters of college presidents ought to be told a few home truths now and then.
    And on the others, yesterday’s lecture had had a markedly stimulating effect. Several students had abruptly chosen related subjects for their term papers, and the fraternity president had capitalized on his yesterday’s discomfiture by planning a humorous article for the Hempnell Buffoon on the primitive significance of fraternity initiations. All in all they had a very brisk session.
    Afterwards Norman found himself musing good-humoredly on how college students were misunderstood by a great many people.
    Collegians were generally viewed as dangerously rebellious and radical, and shockingly experimental in their morality. Indeed the lower classes were inclined to picture them as monsters of unwholesomeness and perversion, potential murderers of little children and celebrants of various equivalents of the Black Mass. Whereas actually they were more conventional than many high school kids. And as for experiments in sex, they were a long way behind those whose education ended with grade school.
    Instead of standing up boldly in the classroom and uttering rebel pronouncements, they were much more apt to be fawningly hypocritical, desirous only of saying the thing that would please the teacher most. Small danger of their getting out of hand! On the contrary, it was necessary to charm them slowly into truthfulness, away from the taboos and narrow-mindedness of the home. And how much more complex these problems became, and needful of solution, when you were living in an obvious time of interim morality like today, when national loyalty and faithfulness to family alone were dissolving in favor of a wider loyalty and a wider love — or in favor of a selfish, dog-eat-dog, atom-bombed chaos, if the human spirit were hedged, clipped, and dwarfed by traditional egotisms and fears.
    College