and discouraged inattention in the
lecture-room by dexterous side-kicks.

Even to his ex-room-mate, Plain Smith, the grim and slovenly
school-teacher who had called him "bub" and discouraged his
confidences, Carl presented the attractions of Professor Frazer's
lectures when he met him on the campus. Smith looked quizzical and
"guessed" that plays and play-actin' were useless, if not actually
immoral.

"Yes, but this isn't just plays, my young friend," said Carl, with a
hauteur new but not exceedingly impressive to Plain Smith. "He takes
up all these new stunts, all this new philosophy and stuff they have
in London and Paris. There's something besides Shakespeare and the
Bible!" he added, intending to be spiteful. It may be stated that he
did not like Plain Smith.

"What new philosophy?"

"The spirit of brotherhood. I suppose you're too orthodox for that!"

"Oh no, sonny, not for that, not for that. And it ain't so _very_ new.
That's what Christ taught! No, sonny, I ain't so orthodox but what I'm
willing to have 'em show me anything that tries to advance
brotherhood. Not that I think it's very likely to be found in a lot of
Noo York plays. But I'll look in at one lesson, anyway," and Plain
Smith clumped away, humming "Greenland's Icy Mountains."

Professor Frazer's modern drama course began with Ibsen. The first
five lectures were almost conventional; they were an attempt to place
contemporary dramatists, with reflections on the box-office
standpoint. But his sixth lecture began rather unusually.

There was an audience of sixty-four in Lecture-room A--earnest girl
students bringing out note-books and spectacle-cases, frivolous girls
feeling their back hair, and the men settling down with a "Come, let's
get it over!" air, or glowing up worshipingly, like Eugene Field
Linderbeck, or determined not to miss anything, like Carl--the
captious college audience, credulous as to statements of fact and
heavily unresponsive to the spirit. Professor Frazer, younger than
half a dozen of the plow-trained undergraduates, thin of hair and
sensitive of face, sitting before them, with one hand in his pocket
and the other nervously tapping the small reading-table, spoke
quietly:

"I'm not going to be a lecturer to-day. I'm not going to analyze the
plays of Shaw which I assigned to you. You're supposed to have read
them yourselves. I am going to imagine that I am at tea in New Haven,
or down in New York, at dinner in the basemen