ended from Scotch soldiers who had come over there two hundred years
before and settled down after the war, just as the Hessians settled down
and went to farming in Pennsylvania, their descendants occasionally
becoming Daughters of the Revolution, because their grandsires fought
with Washington.

This Scotch strain gave a sturdy bias to the Kants--these Lutherans were
really rebels, and as every one knows, there are only two ways of
dealing with a religious Scotchman--agree with him or kill him.

Most people said that Kant was supremely stubborn--he himself called it
"firmness in the right." Once, when a couple of calumniators were
thinking up all the bad things they could say about him, one of them
exclaimed, "He isn't five feet high!"

"Liar!" came the shrill voice of the Philosopher, who had accidentally
overheard them, "Liar! I am exactly five feet!" And he drew himself up,
and struck his staff proudly and defiantly on the ground.

Which reminds one of the story told of Professor Josiah Royce, who once
rang up six fares on the register when he wished to stop a Boston
street-car. When the conductor protested, the philosopher called him
"up-start," "curmudgeon" and "nincompoop," and showed the fallacy of his
claim that thirty cents had been lost, since nobody had found it.
Moreover, he offered to prove his proposition by algebraic equation, if
one of the gentlemen present had chalk and blackboard on his person.

Once Kant was looking at the flowers in a beautiful garden. But instead
of looking through the iron pickets, he stooped over and was squinting
through the key-hole of the lock. A student coming along asked him why
he didn't look through the pickets and thus get a perfect view.

"Go on, you fool," was the stern reply; "I am studying the law of
optics--the unobstructed vision reveals too much--the vivid view is only
gotten through a small aperture."

All of which was believed to be a sudden inspiration in way of reply
that came to the great professor when caught doing an absent-minded
thing. That Kant was not above a little pious prevarication is shown by
a story he himself tells. He was never inside of a church once during
the last fifty years of his life. But when he became Chancellor of the
University, one of his duties was to lead a procession to the Cathedral,
where certain formal religious services were held. Kant tried to have
the exercises in a hall, but failing in this, he did his duty, and
march