"That is Professor ----," a fellow academician would say to a stranger
on the campus as the erect, lithe-limbed young man veered round a
corner. "A pillar, sir, a pillar of the institution. The making of a
great man, a great man, sir."
But all this was long before the advent of the old professor, long
before the day when people ceased to seek him out, to fawn before his
talent, and to cherish in memory the brilliant phrases that he was so
apt in making. For when that day came he was no more noticed in his
passage to and fro across the campus than one of the rats that were wont
to scamper from building to building in the dead hours of the night.
The transition from the young professor to the old professor was not
sudden, but stealthily gradual. He loved the past, its doctrines and its
methods. What had been _his_ youth should be, he thought, the youth for
all time, and he never knew his error. Little by little, year by year,
he became less often the honored guest at a faculty dinner. He clung to
the manners of his youth and the younger wives called him an old fogey
and smiled when his name was mentioned.
Thus it continued until he became a mere ghost of dead days, an
occasional, living reminder of an ancient system of education or method
of class-room work long since relegated to that dusty storehouse where
are heaped "old things" that have served their usefulness, flung aside
to make room for _papier maché_ manikins and varnished maps of
pasteboard with the mountains raised to scale and the winding streams
indented.
And yet in the official circle of the institution there lingered a
certain reverence for the old professor. His sweetness of character, his
gentleness of spirit, his humility, made it a sad duty to point the way
to him; and so, from month to month, the president's request for his
resignation was delayed, and then there occurred a little incident that
secured for him, unknowing, another period of service.
The trembling country awaited application of the torch of war. In the
college town a meeting was called and the citizenry swarmed into a
church where the president of the University was to deliver an address.
On a bench at the front sat the old professor, his face uplifted, drawn
with the pain that tore his gentle heart, for the South he loved was
proving its disloyalty to the Union that he worshipped.
Through the open windows came a breeze of gentle April that moved the
old professor's hair, and he lifted a trembling hand to his high smooth
forehead.
Even as the president spoke there was heard a cry in the street that
caused the faces of strong men to pale and their eyes to start.
"_Sumpter has been fired upon!_"
And at the cry right triumphed over wrong in the old professor's
throbbing heart. Getting unsteadily upon his feet he raised his hand.
"Silence!" he called, and then, in the hush, he added, his voice
trembling,
"I move that this meeting adjourn at once to Court House Square!"
A cheer was raised, and in the wake of the procession that was formed
upon the instant the old professor marched--his head bowed, his eyes
wet--to the open place where the speeches, now ablaze, with patriotic
fervor, were resumed.
There were those who knew and somewhat understood what it had meant to
the old professor to move that adjournment and when they spoke of him
among themselves for many days thereafter it was with a little tremor of
the voice and a certain mistiness of the eyes. And for three years he
lived among them uncomplaining though stricken to the soul.