,« I said, »but if the doctors and teachers do not know
enough of industry to be President, neither, I should think, can the President
know enough of medicine and education to control those departments.«
    »No more does he,« was the reply. »Except in the general way that he is
responsible for the enforcement of the laws as to all classes, the President has
nothing to do with the faculties of medicine and education, which are controlled
by boards of regents of their own, in which the President is ex-officio
chairman, and has the casting vote. These regents, who, of course, are
responsible to Congress, are chosen by the honorary members of the guilds of
education and medicine, the retired teachers and doctors of the country.«
    »Do you know,« I said, »the method of electing officials by votes of the
retired members of the guilds is nothing more than the application on a national
scale of the plan of government by alumni, which we used to a slight extent
occasionally in the management of our higher educational institutions.«
    »Did you, indeed?« exclaimed Dr. Leete, with animation. »That is quite new
to me, and I fancy will be to most of us, and of much interest as well. There
has been great discussion as to the germ of the idea, and we fancied that there
was for once something new under the sun. Well! well! In your higher educational
institutions! that is interesting indeed. You must tell me more of that.«
    »Truly, there is very little more to tell than I have told already,« I
replied. »If we had the germ of your idea, it was but as a germ.«
 

                                 Chapter XVIII

That evening I sat up for some time after the ladies had retired, talking with
Dr. Leete about the effect of the plan of exempting men from further service to
the nation after the age of forty-five, a point brought up by his account of the
part taken by the retired citizens in the government.
    »At forty-five,« said I, »a man still has ten years of good manual labor in
him, and twice ten years of good intellectual service. To be superannuated at
that age and laid on the shelf must be regarded rather as a hardship than a
favor by men of energetic dispositions.«
    »My dear Mr. West,« exclaimed Dr. Leete, beaming upon me, »you cannot have
any idea of the piquancy your nineteenth century ideas have for us of