What Robert Benchley learned in his first year at Harvard:

1. Charlemagne either died or was born or did something with the Holy Roman Empire in 800.
2. By placing one paper bag inside another paper bag you can carry home a milk shake in it.
3. There is a double l in the middle of parallel.
4. Powder rubbed on the chin will take the place of a shave if the room isn’t very light.
5. French nouns ending in “aison” are feminine.
6. Almost everything you need to know about a subject is in the encyclopedia.
7. A tasty sandwich can be made by spreading peanut butter on raisin bread.
8. A floating body displaces its own weight in the liquid in which it floats.
9. A sock with a hole in the toe can be worn inside out with comparative comfort.
10. The chances are against filling an inside straight.
11. There is a law in economics called The Law of Diminishing Returns, which means that after a certain margin is reached returns begin to diminish. This may not be correctly stated, but there is a law by that name.
12. You begin tuning a mandolin with A and tune the other strings from that.

“My courses were all selected with a very definite aim in view, with a serious purpose in mind,” he wrote. “No classes before eleven in the morning or after two-thirty in the afternoon, and nothing on Saturday at all. On that rock was my education built.”