Alike as they were, there was one joy that now and then came into the
old professor's life that the other could not share.
It came to him when, at widely separated intervals, there crossed his
path a man with hair almost as white as his own, who in the days long
gone had sat before him on the benches of the class-room as a student,
and absorbed his wider wisdom. When such an one he met, the old
professor's voice always caught in his throat and he sought to cover
the confusion that he suffered by a closer pressure of his hand. Then,
the emotion passing, something of the old light would flame up in his
eyes.
He would step back and exclaim: "Well! well! well!" Then the memories
would surge back into his mind and he would gaze abstractedly without
speaking.
"You remember me?" the other old fellow would ask, gaily.
"_Remember_ you!" the old professor would exclaim and nudge him,
playfully. "Remember _you_? Well, well, I guess I couldn't _forget_ you
if I tried! Why you were the scamp that tied the white mule to my
desk-leg and left him there over night so I should be greeted by his
bray when I entered the room in the morning! Remember _you_! Ha! ha!
I've been waiting all these years to get at you!"
Then he would stride upon the white haired "grad" with hand raised,
ominously, but with the merry twinkle still lighting up his eyes; whilst
the victim would quail mockingly, with a brighter twinkle in his own.
The old professor was known often to have kissed gray haired boys when
they met on alumni day.
"I have always called you the mule-pupil," he would continue as, arm in
arm they strolled back and forth along the broad main corridor.
"And do you remember what you said to the class when you found that mule
at your desk, in the morning?" the scamp would ask, with a chuckle,
perhaps.
"No, what?"
"Ah, I remember it as though it were yesterday; how you came bustling
into the room. You saw the mule. We were all boiling inside. You did not
scowl. You did not rant. You did not call down upon our heads the
venging hand of a just heaven. You just turned to us as calm as you are
now...."
The old professor would gurgle here, with rare delight.
" ... and said, 'young gentlemen, I perceive that you have already been
provided with an instructor quite competent to teach you all you will
ever be able to learn!' And then you walked out of the room with a
polite 'good-morning.'"
Here the former student would roar with laughter.
"You don't tell me," the old professor would exclaim. "You don't tell me
I said _that_! Well, well, well; that _was_ rather hard on you boys,
wasn't it? I'd forgotten all about it. I--I just remembered the
_mule_!"
"And do you recall," the man who was a boy, again would ask, "how you
found all the wood from the big wood-box in the south-wing corridor
piled against your door?"
The old professor would wrinkle his forehead here and stare thoughtfully
at the floor.
"No, I don't seem to recollect," he would say.
"Well you _did_; we boys had piled it there, of course. Must have been a
cord at least. Then we hung around to see what you would do."
"And what _did_ I do?"
"You began to remove the pile, stick by stick, and to pack them all away
in the great wood-box."
Here the old professor was always wont to shake with silent laughter.
"Well, we stood it as long as we could, and then Billy Green--you
remember Billy Green; poor Billy, he was killed at Gettysburg. Billy
went up to you, as brave as you please, and said: 'Professor, I don't
know who _piled_ this wood against your door but _un-piling_ it is no
work for you.' And then he shouted to us, 'come on, boys,' and we fell
to and got the wood away from that door in about two jerks of a lamb's
tail. But didn't we feel small! Professor, why didn't you have a few of
us fired bodily?"
"Oh, no, no, my friend," the old professor would perhaps exclaim,
quickly. "Expel a boy for being a boy! It is not for you or me, dear
sir, to seek to improve upon the handiwork of God!"
And there would ensue another laugh, and many more in the three days to
follow, and then commencement would be over and the old student would go
back to Kansas City and the old professor to his books.
But for more than three days a subtle effect of the meeting would remain
with him. For many days he would carry his head a bit higher. A color
flush would show upon his hollow cheeks; his step would take on an
unaccustomed elasticity. For a discriminating Fate had touched to the
old professor's lips the cup of life and he had sipped of the contents,
and another year was his.