I remember him best as I saw him first. It was in the late afternoon of
a golden day in mid-October. A companion pointed him out to me as we
approached the ivy-green library. He was coming slowly down the steps,
one arm encircling a great bundle of books, one hand fumbling at his
neck scarf. The clothes he wore were of another day. The coat was
full-skirted, long, and bulging at the breast. About his thin throat was
twisted a black silk stock, frayed and rusty, over which the loose and
unstarched collar rolled. On his broad-toed shoes his baggy trousers
fell in folds. There was a seeming rigidity to the creases that induced
the thought they must have been so always; like the wrinkles in the
wrappings of a mummy. And yet, infinitely pathetic as the picture was, I
knew that such a coat, such a stock, even such a round crowned, broad
brimmed soft hat as that he wore, once had made the old professor a man
of fashion--a quarter of a century before.
"That's the oldest professor on the campus," my companion said. "In
college? No. He hasn't taught a class for twenty years. He was an old
fogey and they removed him, I'm told, to make room for a younger man.
He's only waiting for the end now. Every one says he'd give five years
to get back on the faculty. You'll usually find him near the library,
either just going in or just coming out. He hides himself all day among
the books. The fellows call him 'The Ghost.' I've been told he saved a
little from his salary every quarter and that now he lives in a little
back room somewhere near the campus and cooks his own meals."
And whenever after that I saw him it was this last phrase that recurred
to me with almost painful insistency ... "lives in a little back room
somewhere ... and cooks his own meals."
It was hard for youth to realize that such could be humanity's reward to
a man who had given a life of patience, forebearance, toil, and
sacrifice, to make his little world the better for his having lived
within it.
We stood apart and watched him as he came slowly down the broad, stone
steps. At the last he stopped and looked up at the sky. We saw his face
more clearly then. It was thin, pale, drawn about the mouth, but the
eyes were infinitely tender. His lips trembled and seemed to form words
that were not uttered. Then he walked on. Twice, before he turned the
corner of the ivy-covered wall, he raised a hand to his face and passed
the dangling finger-tips of his black cloth glove across his eyes.
That slow walk home beneath the canopy the painted maples made marked
the ending of another day in the old professor's fading life; a day such
as days had been for twenty years, a space of time in which a smile had
flitted to his lips, a tear had risen, and he had held the book a
little closer to his eyes.
It was not long thereafter that we learned the end had come. They found
him in his chair, a book upon his knee, his slim forefinger marking the
page where he had left off reading to close his eyes and dream. The pale
ghost of a smile still lingered about his mouth.
Some one, gentler than the rest, placed a single rose in the cold hand,
and a scant company followed the slow hearse to the cemetery.
No one wept. Perhaps no one even felt a sadness, standing there beside
the open grave. Yet he would not have wished it otherwise. They covered
him for the long, long sleep, and went away.
And now, on a day in June, when the air is heavy with the fragrance of
the green and growing things and the grasses are alive with singing
creatures, the breeze that stirs alike the tall tree-tops and the tender
shoots of grain seems to whisper above the lonely grave, unmarked in
that great City of the Dead: "Sleep on; thy work is done; done well.
Thou shalt be rewarded."