The daring spirits say, those who were going into their father's office, and so did not look upon Chrystal as a door locked to their advancement sought to bring sunshine into the room. Chrystal soon had the blind down on that. I hear they have been at it recently, with the usual result. To relieve the monotony, a student at the end of bench ten dropped a marble, which toppled slowly downward toward the professor. At every step it took, there was a smothered guffaw; but Chrystal, who was working at the board, did not turn his head. When the marble reached the floor, he said, still with his back to the class, "Will the student at the end of bench ten, who dropped that marble, stand up?" All eyes dilated. He had counted the falls of the marble from step to step. Mathematics do not obscure the intellect.
Twenty
per cent was a good percentage in Chrystal's examinations; thirty sent you away whistling. As the M.A. drew nigh, students on their prospects might have been farmers discussing the weather. Some put their faith in the professor's goodness of heart, of which symptoms had been showing. He would not, all at once, "raise the standard" hated phrase until you are through, when you write to the papers advocating it. Courage! was it not told of the Glasgow Snell competition that one of the competitors, as soon as he saw the first paper, looked for his hat and the door; that he was forbidden to withdraw until an hour had elapsed, and that he then tackled the paper and ultimately carried off the Snell? Of more immediate interest, perhaps, was the story of the quaking student, whose neighbor handed him in pencil, beneath the desk, the answer to several questions. It was in an M.A. exam., and the affrighted student found that he could not read his neighbor's notes. Trusting to fortune, he inclosed them with his own answers, writing at the top, "No time to write these out in ink, so inclose them in pencil." He got through: no moral.
A condemned criminal wondering if he is to get a reprieve will not feel the position novel if he has loitered in a university quadrangle waiting for the janitor to nail up the results of a degree exam. A queer gathering we were, awaiting the verdict of Chrystal. Some compressed their lips, others were lively as fireworks dipped in water; there were those who rushed round and round the quadrangle; only one went the length of saying that he did not want to pass. H. I shall call him. I met him the other day in Fleet Street, and he annoyed me by asking at once if I remembered the landlady I quarrelled with because she wore my socks to church of a Sunday: we found her out one wet forenoon. H. waited the issue with a cigar in his mouth. He had purposely, he explained, given in a bad paper. He could not understand why men were so anxious to get through. He had ten reasons for wishing to be plucked. We let him talk. The janitor appeared with the fateful paper, and we lashed about him like waves round a lighthouse, all but H., who strolled languidly to the board to which the paper was being fastened. A moment afterward I heard a shriek: "I'm through! I'm through!" It was H. His cigar was dashed aside, and he sped like an arrow from the bow to the nearest telegraph office, shouting "I'm through!" as he ran.
Those of us who had H.'s fortune now consider Chrystal made to order for his chair, but he has never, perhaps, had a proper appreciation of the charming fellows who get ten per cent.
VIII. PROFESSOR SELLAR
carpe diem odi profanum vulgusMr. James Payn, who never forgave the Scottish people for pulling down their blinds on Sundays, was annoyed by the halo they have woven around the name "professor." He knew an Edinburgh lady who was scandalized because that mere poet, Alexander Smith, coolly addressed professors by their surnames. Mr. Payn might have known what it is to walk in the shadow of a Senatus Academicus could he have met such specimens as Sellar, Fraser, Tait, and Sir Alexander Grant marching down the Bridges abreast. I have seen them: an inspiriting sight. The pavement only held three. You could have shaken hands with them from an upper window.
Sellar's treatment of his students was always that of a fine gentleman. Few got near him; all respected him. At times he was addressed in an unknown tongue, but he kept his countenance. He was particular about students keeping to their proper benches, and once thought he had caught a swarthy north countryman straying. "You are in your wrong seat, Mr. Orr." "Na, am richt eneuch." "You should be in the seat in front. That is bench 12, and you are entered on bench 10."
"Eh? This is no bench twal, [counting] twa, fower, sax, aucht, ten." "There is something wrong." "Oh-h-h, [with sudden enlightenment] ye've been coontin' the first dask; we dinna coont the first dask." The professor knew the men he had to deal with too well to scorn this one, who turned out to be a fine fellow. He was the only man I ever knew who ran his medical and arts classes together, and so many lectures had he to attend daily that he mixed them up. He graduated, however, in both faculties in five years, and the last I heard of him was that, when applying for a medical assistantship, he sent his father's photograph because he did not have one of himself. He was a man of brains as well as sinew, and dined briskly on a shilling a week.