consideration, enunciated by him, that
would have been looked on as mad, coming from me....

Again the faculty were nonplussed ... puzzled....

Dineen, Van Maarden and I were together much. And the latter found more
delight in the time when he could discuss freely and unacademically with
me than when he was invited to formal teas and dinners by the weightier
members of the faculty and community.

It was psychic research that we particularly discussed. Van Maarden was
the greatest scholar in the Mystic, the Occult, the Spiritualistic that
I have ever met. He claimed to be able to go out of the body at will and
see what any friend was up to at any time, in any out-of-the-way place
in the world....

When I jested that such a faculty might sometimes prove embarrassing to
his friends, he laughed and slapped me on the back.

* * * * *

Dineen was a queer little chap. He roomed de luxe at the Bellman House.

One night, during a cyclone that swept the town and the adjacent
country, a fragment of roof was lifted off the hostelry in which he
dwelt. The women-servants and waitresses were thrown into a panic. One,
who collapsed on a lounge in the upstairs hall, swore that Dineen had
felt of her leg as she lay there. A scandal was started. I know that
Dineen, in his European fashion, was free with his hands, when he meant
no harm. He had merely laid his hand on the girl's leg, in friendly
fashion, and asked if she was hurt.

But the nasty Puritan mind of the community went to work, and the story
was hawked about that Professor Dineen, taking advantage of the cyclone,
had tried to "feel the girl up."

This, and the fact that he had been a friend of mine (after my
forthcoming scandal it counted strongly against him) later effected in
his being requested to resign from the faculty.

But the real cause of the brilliant, strange man's persecution was the
jealousy of the dean of the philosophical department of the former's
real ability.

* * * * *

"We must do more for this man than we have ... he is a genius ... he has
not enough money to return to Europe on....

"He has written a curious, mad play called _Iistral_ ... one dealing
with psychic phenomena, which we ought to put on....

"That way we'll net him three or four hundred dollars."

It was Dineen who spoke.

We chanced to be walking up the Hill together.

* * * * *