ed professor bit his lips and shook his head threateningly as he
watched him depart. Then in a trembling voice he began his preachment
on the same old theme, delivered however with more energy and more
eloquence. It dealt with the growing arrogance, the innate ingratitude,
the presumption, the lack of respect for superiors, the pride that
the spirit of darkness infused in the young, the lack of manners,
the absence of courtesy, and so on. From this he passed to coarse
jests and sarcasm over the presumption which some good-for-nothing
"prompters" had of teaching their teachers by establishing an academy
for instruction in Castilian.

"Aha, aha!" he moralized, "those who the day before yesterday scarcely
knew how to say, 'Yes, Padre,' 'No, Padre,' now want to know more
than those who have grown gray teaching them. He who wishes to learn,
will learn, academies or no academies! Undoubtedly that fellow who
has just gone out is one of those in the project. Castilian is in good
hands with such guardians! When are you going to get the time to attend
the academy if you have scarcely enough to fulfill your duties in the
regular classes? We wish that you may all know Spanish and that you
pronounce it well, so that you won't split our ear-drums with your
twist of expression and your 'p's'; [32] but first business and then
pleasure: finish your studies first, and afterwards learn Castilian,
and all become clerks, if you so wish."

So he went on with his harangue until the bell rang and the class was
over. The two hundred and thirty-four students, after reciting their
prayers, went out as ignorant as when they went in, but breathing more
freely, as if a great weight had been lifted from them. Each youth had
lost another hour of his life and with it a portion of his dignity and
self-respect, and in exchange there was an increase of discontent,
of aversion to study, of resentment in their hearts. After all this
ask for knowledge, dignity, gratitude!

_De nobis, post haec, tristis sententia fertur_!

Just as the two hundred and thirty-four spent their class hours,
so the thousands of students who preceded them have spent theirs,
and, if matters do not mend, so will those yet to come spend theirs,
and be brutalized, while wounded dignity and youthful enthusiasm
will be converted into hatred and sloth, like the waves that become
polluted along one part of the shore and roll on one after another,
each in succession depositing a larger