Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 387
So I wasn’t surprised when about a couple of weeks ago I got a letter from Archie which said, “If you are coming through here soon I’d be glad if you’d stay over and have dinner some evening. I have some college stuff to ask you about — important stuff — but I’d rather talk about it than explain it in a letter.”
Naturally I took occasion as soon as I could stay from afternoon local to the night flyer.
It was one of those beautiful evenings in late September, everything soft and still and mellow; the water in the dam was lower and the water below the dam was quieter, and the main street drowsier and the trees heavier — and the gladioli and asters and late petunias and golden glow banked round the houses and all of Woodsdale hazy and soft with that touch of Indian summer that would have touched even an Indian.
Archie Plumter’s house — but you know exactly what that would be like — large and low — sandstone and red brick, and half timber, with sweeping porches and verandahs and clipped grass and flowers, yet as if all in a woodland.
“There’s the old college,” Archie said as he led me into the library and pointed to a picture. “Nell will be down in a minute. Pretty good of the old joint, isn’t it? Just take a good look at it while I shake up a cocktail.”
The reader must make no mistake about that cocktail. I said above that you can’t get drinks in Woodsdale. Neither can you. This was just some rye and vermouth that Archie had in the house. In fact that’s the only way they can get it — to have it in the house.
“I’ve got some stuff to talk about,” said Archie, “but I’d sooner let it keep till after dinner . . .”
We drank the cocktail and in came Nell. Archie Plumter has been as comfortable and fortunate in his marriage as in everything else. Nell’s father was a lumberman; in fact, he was a big lumberman, one of the biggest, and there’s something about that business of the forest almost as warm and natural as flour and feed, or big scale farming. Poets may talk as they like about a fisherman’s daughter who lives on the water. But for matrimony, for comfortable companionship and financial strength, give me a lumberman’s daughter every time. “Nell, you remember,” said Archie as we shook hands, “was at college too. But she, of course, didn’t go on to a degree.”
No, of course she didn’t. Anyone as pretty as she must have been twenty years ago didn’t need a degree. She could pick up something easier at college than that.
“Nell,” said Archie, “was a partial.”
Was she really? You’d hardly think so now. She looks pretty complete. Still, the years have used her kindly.
“I was just showing this picture of the old circus,” continued Archie. “That picture was taken the first year I played on the football team. You remember, Nell, the big game when the college moved up to second place but I couldn’t play because of my wrist?”
No doubt Nell remembered it all right: but more likely as the game when he held her hand under the rug on the football benches, and she realized that perhaps she wouldn’t need to go any further with mathematics. College girls have their own calendar. They don’t remember the day the college gave an honorary degree to the British Ambassador. They remember the day they first wore their dark blue dress with the fur collar.
We went into dinner, one of those excellent and solid dinners, heavy with steak and light with claret and fragrant with coffee and cigars — the kind of real dinner only to be arranged by a lumberman’s daughter who remembers feeding her father — just the thing to nourish the trained college brain. The claret, fortunately, was some that Archie had in the cellar; so was the Scotch whiskey that we had afterwards — just stuff out of the cellar.
All through dinner Archie was full of reminiscences and questions and filled with by-gone admiration.
“What became of Professor Crabbe, the Greek Professor?”
“He’s still there, I think,” I said.
“Some of the fellows didn’t like him so much,” said Archie, “and of course I never took Greek. But he was certainly a wizard. That man had the most remarkable and the most ready memory I ever came across. I asked him one day, for instance, what was the date of the foundation of Babylon.”
“And did he answer?”
“Answered right off — not a moment’s hesitation — said he didn’t recall it. He certainly was a wonder.”
Indeed from our dinner talk that evening the college in Plumter’s days had been instructed by a set of “wizards,” “wonders” and “wows,” an illumination that never comes twice to a college.
“What became of old Professor Dim, the historian?” Archie asked.
“He’s still right there,” I said, “as far as I know. I haven’t been actually inside the college for about a year but I’m sure he’s there . . . Pretty old, of course.”
“He must be. Do you remember the day I knocked him down in the corridor and the old fellow was nice about it? You remember the way we used to come rushing out of the First Year Latin lecture at twelve o’clock, all in a stampede, and I knocked the old fellow down and Bill, the janitor, picked him up. Where’s Bill? When did he die?”
“He’s not dead,” I said, “he’s there.” Archie Plumter, like all stay-away graduates, imagined everybody had died since he went away.
After dinner Nell went upstairs to help their two little girls with their algebra. That’s where Nell’s education as a partial comes in, eh? — able to help the little girls (they’re twelve and fourteen) with their algebra. That is, help them as far as simultaneous equations. They’ll have to stop there. But they won’t need quadratics — pretty little girls like those.
Archie unfolded his ideas over the Scotch and cigars. “What I feel is,” he said, “I’ve been a pretty poor sort of graduate. What have I ever done for the old joint, except a casual subscription and things of that sort? Well — I’ve been doing pretty well lately — I want to give the college some money. I want to give it twenty-five thousand dollars. Now, here’s the point. How do I go about it? What do I do? Where do I get the excuse?”
“Excuse?” I said.
“Yes. How do I start it?”
“Archie,” I said, “you don’t need any excuse when you give a college money. They’ll find the excuse: you just find the money. What do you want to do, endow a set of lectures, or offer a fellowship — or just ask them what to do?”
“Oh, I know just what I want to give,” Plumter said. “I want to give a clock — a clock set in a little tower so that students in the campus can see the time. Do you know, when I went to college I had no watch — at least I had an old silver watch of father’s, but it wouldn’t go.”
“I know,” I said, “all students used to have old silver watches that wouldn’t go. Now they have new gunmetal watches that will.”
“Well, this clock I want to give,” said Archie, “does more than tell the time. I got the idea from one that Nell and I saw on our trip this summer to California, at one of those old missions. It has chimes inside it, and just before it strikes the hour it strikes a chime.
Bing! Bong! Bong!
Bong! Bing! Bing!
“The most melodious thing I ever heard,” Archie said.
It seemed to me that I had heard things more melodious than Plumter’s rendering of a chime. But his own opinion was different. He repeated his chimes.
Bing! Bong! Bong!
Bong! Bing! Bing!
And he added: “I’ve got all the data on the whole thing in a business way. It would cost twenty-five thousand and the contractor could hook the clock tower on at any spot on the roof they like. So, what do I do next?”
“Why,” I said, “go down to the city and go and see the president and tell him about it. That’s all. That will give you a look round the place.”
“That’s so,” he assented, “that’s right. I’ll have a look at the old shop. I’ll come next week. You must meet me at the train.”
So a week after that Plumter came up from Woodsdale to the city to make his benefaction.
I met him at the station. It was only half-past eight on a bright autumn morning, but he was nervous already. He began at once. “What I think I’ll say, I’ll say, ‘Mr. President, I’m afraid I’ve been rather a delinquent graduate, but . . .’ Something like that, eh?”
I said that would be fine. At breakfast, and after, he was still rehearsing it; “ ’Mr. President, I’m afraid . . .’ I won’t beat about the bush,” he said. “I’ll go right at it, eh?”
He had no notion how easy it is to give twenty-five thousand dollars to a college. You don’t have to find the words; just the money.
So in the middle morning we started for the college. I hadn’t realized till we came to the gates of the campus how much it has changed since Plumter had left it twenty years ago — the beautiful big Mines Building, all white stone, on one side of the campus and the new library, of white stone and slots of glass on the other.
Plumter stopped dead as we entered the campus.
“I’ll be damned!” he said as he looked round it. “Is this all the size it was? No bigger than this? I thought it was twice the size.”
Then he said, “What’s that?”
“That’s the new Mines building,” I said.
“Where’s the old one, the little old red brick building?”
“They knocked it down,” I explained.
“Knocked it down!” repeated Plumter. “Good Lord, knocked it down! And what’s the other building?”
“That’s the new library,” I said; “the old one was knocked down ten years ago.”
“You mean they knocked down the library?” said Plumter. He sounded horrified. Then with evident relief, he exclaimed, “Say, there’s the old museum, yes, sir, the same darned old museum! I’m certainly glad to see it again.”
“You used to be in it much?” I asked.
“I never was in it,” said Plumter. “There was ten cents admission, you remember?”
All this time little flocks of students, boys and girls, were overtaking and passing us, for this was the crowded time of the morning with the big lectures of the first and second year going on.
“Who are all these?” asked Plumter. “Is there partly a high school here now?”
“No,” I said, “these are the students.”
“Good Lord!” said Plumter and stood still to let a demure little group of seventeen-year-old girls go past. One of the demure little girls was saying as she went by, “I don’t care what you call it, I call it a hell of a poor course . . .”
And just at that moment we ran into Professor Crabbe. Plumter hailed him with outstretched hand.
“How do you do, sir . . . you remember me . . . I hope . . . I’m Plumter.”
“Oh, perfectly well, perfectly well,” said the professor, “perfectly well.”
They shook hands.
“And what are you in now, Mr. Platter?” asked Professor Crabbe.
“I’m in the milling industry, sir,” said Plumter.
“In the ministry!” said Professor Crabbe. “Dear me . . . well, you were always heading that way, heading that way! Your Greek must come very well for your sermons.”
“I never took any,” said Plumter.
“Of course,” said the Professor.
“You’re still lecturing, sir?” asked Plumter.
“All except my eyesight,” answered Professor Crabbe. “My hearing is excellent, Mr. Plaster” — and he gave him a challenging look.
“You can still see for bookwriting, sir,” said Plumter pleasantly.
“I never see him,” said the professor. “In your class, wasn’t he? But I never see him now, haven’t for years. Time moves on, you know — well, good-bye, Mr. Blister.”
But there was more cheer and consolation in meeting Bill, the janitor, as we went into Arts Building, Bill who was timeless and ageless, and remembered everything.
“Well, Mr. Plumter, where you been all this time? We thought you was never coming back!”
“You remember me, eh?” said Plumter, much gratified.
“Remember you?” laughed Bill, “I should say so! You was a regular holy terror! More breakages to your name, Mr. Plumter, than any other student in college!”
Plumter joined in the laugh. He must tell them in Woodsdale about that “holy terror” stuff.
Just then there burst into the main hall through the opening class room door the full charge and onslaught of “Latin One Men” coming out after the lecture. It was like what we used to read of the stampede of Texas steers . . . Plumter was swept aside, pounded and jostled in the flooding pushing crowd; but all so polite, those boys. “Sorry, sir,” they’d say as they ran into his stomach. “Excuse me, sir,” as they got him in the small of his back . . .
“What’s all this?” asked Plumter.
“First Year Latin coming out, sir . . . but Lord! That’s nothing to what it was in your day. Remember when you knocked down Professor Dim?”
And as the flood subsided who should be standing there but Professor Dim, Professor of History and Archaeology. There he was just as ancient and as diminutive, as rosy and as cheery as ever — just as young at seventy as he had been old at fifty. There he was, gown and all, and his lectures, all in leather, under his arm. Being a professor of history he could remember anything up to three thousand years . . .
“Why, how do you, Mr. Plumter,” he said, “how do you do. This is really a pleasure . . .”
“I’m very glad to see you, sir; I always wish I’d been fortunate enough to take your lectures.”
“Ah, now, that’s very kind of you! I wonder if you wouldn’t care perhaps to come in and sit and listen now . . . oh no, these are not the old lectures of your time — this is a new course — it’s only the sixth year I’ve given it — a course on the Crusades . . . But do come . . . I’ve just a small class . . . a dozen . . . I often have visitors drop in . . . only last month a young Chinaman came in . . . accidentally . . . but he was delighted . . . Please do.”
So genial, so anxious, old Professor Dim, with that queer conceit a professor never loses — so what could we say?
“That’s right,” said Professor Dim. “William here will show you the room.”
The class were already there, seated and decorously waiting — a professor’s “dozen” of them, that is, seven. Anyone acquainted with a college register could have explained just who they were and why they were there: three divinity students who were taking the Crusades as a credit in Christianity, a football student taking it as a football qualification, a history student who was liable to the Crusades because he’d fallen down on the French Revolution, and two women Sociology students who had been compelled by a clash in the time-table to substitute the Crusades in place of a course in Motherhood which came at the wrong hour.
From the side door in came Professor Dim. He took his place behind his reading desk, unfolded and spread the blue fool’s-cap sheets of the Crusades, bowed courteously to the class, and began: —
“Heliogabalus—” began Professor Dim.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” said the football man.
“Heliogabalus, Mr. Munro—” repeated Professor Dim.
“Thank you, sir—”
“Heliogabalus,” said Professor Dim, for the third time — and paused while all the class wrote down Heliogabalus . . .
“having now assumed the purple . . .” announced Professor Dim.
“purple” . . . wrote the class.
A college lecture is a queer thing, for people not accustomed to it. The Professor isn’t exactly dictating the lecture, and he isn’t exactly talking, and the class are not exactly taking dictation and they’re not exactly listening. It’s a system they both have grown so used to that it’s second nature.
But for anyone to have to sit and listen to it, without writing down anything, not even “purple,” is, of course, impossible. It’s excruciating. I could watch Archie Plumter suffering; trying to look interested; trying to listen; trying to not listen. I knew just what he was thinking; he was wondering if it was really true that he had had four years of this! That he had gone not to one lecture in a morning but to two, three or even four of them!
So he sat agonizing. Then I found in my pocket a pencil and I took some sheets of paper “off” a divinity student behind us, and gave them to Plumter. Oh, my! what a change! What a transformation!
He happened to get the chance of a real start . . . Professor Dim had just opened up. “In the year a.d. 940, or, if you prefer it, the Arabian year 318 . . .” Oh, my! that was stuff! Mr. Plumter’s pencil flew over the paper . . . In five minutes he was absorbed — in ten minutes lost to the world, in the fascination, the concentration of taking notes. Old habit and forgotten aptitude sprang again to life. He wrote and spelt such names Godroi de Bouillon and Saladin Ben Shirgah as easily as you jump a ditch in a van! Think what it would mean, how wonderful it would be, to spend four years like this, with perhaps two or three lectures every morning!!
After the lecture we shook hands with Professor Dim — the Professor a little flushed, a little flurried but as happy over praise as a schoolboy.
“Certainly a wonderful lecture, sir,” said Plumter, his notes all collected into a precious heap.
“I’m so glad you liked it,” said Professor Dim. “It’s one of four — as I say, a special course — when I get it into shape, in a year or two, my hope is to open the course to the public . . . if I had a large hall . . .”
“You’d certainly draw a big crowd,” said Archie Plumter, and he meant it.
And then to see the President. Down the corridor and along and through and up, and so to the President’s outer office, where we sent in Plumter’s card and waited.
Archie, I saw, was all nervous again. I could hear him reciting.
