m that he was temporarily rejected, we advised him to pad out
the thesis properly, and return with it next year, at the same time
informing his new President that this signified nothing as to his
merits, that he was of ultra Ph.D. quality, and one of the strongest
men with whom we had ever had to deal.

To our surprise we were given to understand in reply that the quality
_per se_ of the man signified nothing in this connection, and that
three magical letters were the thing seriously required. The College
had always gloried in a list of faculty members who bore the doctor's
title, and to make a gap in the galaxy, and admit a common fox without
a tail, would be a degradation impossible to be thought of. We wrote
again, pointing out that a Ph.D. in philosophy would prove little
anyhow as to one's ability to teach literature; we sent separate
letters in which we outdid each other in eulogy of our candidate's
powers, for indeed they were great; and at last, _mirabile dictu_, our
eloquence prevailed. He was allowed to retain his appointment
provisionally, on condition that one year later at the farthest his
miserably naked name should be prolonged by the sacred appendage the
lack of which had given so much trouble to all concerned.

Accordingly he came up here the following spring with an adequate
thesis (known since in print as a most brilliant contribution to
metaphysics), passed a first-rate examination, wiped out the stain, and
brought his college into proper relations with the world again.
Whether his teaching, during that first year, of English Literature was
made any the better by the impending examination in a different
subject, is a question which I will not try to solve.

I have related this incident at such length because it is so
characteristic of American academic conditions at the present day.
Graduate schools still are something of a novelty, and higher diplomas
something of a rarity. The latter, therefore, carry a vague sense of
preciousness and honor, and have a particularly "up-to-date"
appearance, and it is no wonder if smaller institutions, unable to
attract professors already eminent, and forced usually to recruit their
faculties from the relatively young, should hope to compensate for the
obscurity of the names of their officers of instruction by the
abundance of decorative titles by which those names are followed on the
pages of the catalogues where they appear. The dazzled reader of the
list,