as a student that I first knew Fleeming, as one of that modest
number of young men who sat under his ministrations in a soul-chilling
class-room at the top of the University buildings. His presence was
against him as a professor: no one, least of all students, would have
been moved to respect him at first sight: rather short in stature,
markedly plain, boyishly young in manner, cocking his head like a
terrier with every mark of the most engaging vivacity and readiness to
be pleased, full of words, full of paradox, a stranger could scarcely
fail to look at him twice, a man thrown with him in a train could
scarcely fail to be engaged by him in talk, but a student would never
regard him as academical. Yet he had that fibre in him that order always
existed in his class-room. I do not remember that he ever addressed me
in language; at the least sign of unrest his eye would fall on me and I
was quelled. Such a feat is comparatively easy in a small class; but I
have misbehaved in smaller classes and under eyes more Olympian than
Fleeming Jenkin's. He was simply a man from whose reproof one shrank; in
manner the least buckramed of mankind, he had, in serious moments, an
extreme dignity of goodness. So it was that he obtained a power over the
most insubordinate of students, but a power of which I was myself
unconscious. I was inclined to regard any professor as a joke, and
Fleeming as a particularly good joke, perhaps the broadest in the vast
pleasantry of my curriculum. I was not able to follow his lectures; I
somehow dared not misconduct myself, as was my customary solace; and I
refrained from attending. This brought me at the end of the session into
a relation with my contemned professor that completely opened my eyes.
During the year, bad student as I was, he had shown a certain leaning to
my society; I had been to his house, he had asked me to take a humble
part in his theatricals; I was a master in the art of extracting a
certificate even at the cannon's mouth; and I was under no apprehension.
But when I approached Fleeming, I found myself in another world; he
would have naught of me. "It is quite useless for _you_ to come to me,
Mr. Stevenson. There may be doubtful cases, there is no doubt about
yours. You have simply _not_ attended my class." The document was
necessary to me for family considerations; and presently I stooped to
such pleadings and rose to such adjurations as make my ears burn to
remember. He was quite unmov