pect that those erudite
professors thought they were getting me fitted out with enduring
habits of majors and minors, but they seem to have made no allowance
for changes of styles nor for growth. When I received my diploma
they seemed to think I was finished, and would stay just as they had
fixed me. They used to talk no little about finished products, and,
on commencement day, appeared to look upon me as one of them. On the
whole, I'm glad that I didn't fulfil their apparent expectations. I
have never been able to make out whether their attentions, on
commencement day, were manifestations of pride or relief. I can see
now that I must have been a sore trial to them. In my callow days,
when they occupied pedestals, I bent the knee to them by way of
propitiating them, but I got bravely over that. At first, what they
taught and what they represented were my majors, but when I came to
shift and reconstruct values, some of them climbed down off their
pedestals, and my knee lost some of its flexibility.

We had one little professor who afforded us no end of amusement by
his taking himself so seriously. The boys used to say that he wrote
letters and sent flowers to himself. He would strut about the campus
as proudly as a pouter-pigeon, never realizing, apparently, that we
were laughing at him. At first, he impressed us greatly with his
grand air and his clothes, but after we discovered that, in his case
at least, clothes do not make the man, we refused to be impressed.
He could split hairs with infinite precision, and smoke a cigarette
in the most approved style, but I never heard any of the boys express
a wish to become that sort of man. Had there occurred a meeting, on
the campus, between him and Zeus he would have been offended, I am
sure, if Zeus had failed to set off a few thunderbolts in his honor.
We used to have at home a bantam rooster that could create no end of
flutter in the chicken yard, and could crow mightily; but when I
reflected that he could neither lay eggs nor occupy much space in a
frying-pan, I demoted him, in my thinking, from major rank to a low
minor, and awarded the palm to one of the less bumptious but more
useful fowls. Our little professor had degrees, of course, and has
them yet, I suspect; but no one ever discovered that he put them to
any good use. For that reason we boys lost interest in the man as
well as his garnishments.

Our professor of chemistry was different. He was never