324 Science After the War
something about the English language. An old friend of
mine came to Cambridge, England, from America as a
graduate student about twenty years ago. He went to a post-
office to buy a five-cent stamp for a letter to America. Two
cents are equal to one English penny, and a stamp for
foreign letters is a “twopence halfpenny stamp” and is
called a “tuppence hapenny stamp.” My friend asked for
“a two and a halfpenny stamp,” and the clerk told him that
they did not sell half stamps. Then he remembered hearing
some one refer to something as a “tuppenny hapenny thing,”
so he thought that must be it and asked for a “tuppenny
hapenny stamp,” whereupon he was asked if he was trying
to be funny. Then he tried asking for a “two-point-five
penny stamp,” and finally an English friend turned up and
bought the stamp for him. So you see even in England
American students have an opportunity to learn something
about the language.
I am afraid that the high cost of living, or rather the cost
of high living, at Oxford and Cambridge in England may
make it difficult for some American graduates to go there.
One American said that a dollar in America went about as
far as a pound in Cambridge or as a mark in Berlin. When
a graduate student arrives in Cambridge and joins one of
the colleges the first thing he has to do is to pay about $100
“caution money” to cover possible damage he may do, and
then he has to have a so-called tutor to whom he must pay
about $150 per year, in return for which he gets nothing but
a few words of advice and perhaps a couple of invitations
to dinner or breakfast. I would suggest to Dr. Shipley that
such charges might be omitted in the case of graduate stu-
dents. At Cambridge, after two years of graduate study
and research, a graduate student may obtain the degree of
B.A.—at least this was the case very recently. Since Ameri-