There is no effort to instill sincerity and intensity of conviction.

On the contrary, the net result is to make the contestants feel that their convictions have nothing to do with their arguments.

I am sorry I did not study elocution in college; but I am exceedingly glad that I did not take part in the type of debate in which stress is laid, not upon getting a speaker to think rightly, but on getting him to talk glibly on the side to which he is assigned, without regard either to what his convictions are or to what they ought to be.
I was a reasonably good student in college, standing just within the first tenth of my class, if I remember rightly; although I am not sure whether this means the tenth of the whole number that entered or of those that graduated.

I was given a Phi Beta Kappa "key." My chief interests were scientific.

When I entered college, I was devoted to out-of-doors natural history, and my ambition was to be a scientific man of the Audubon, or Wilson, or Baird, or Coues type--a man like Hart Merriam, or Frank Chapman, or Hornaday, to-day.