f these desolate nights as if I
_must_ go home and sit watching for my father to come back from
faculty meeting!"

But the tears smote her face, and she turned away. I knew that she had
been her dead father's idol, and he hers.

To her listener what a panorama in those two words: "Faculty meeting!"

Every professor's daughter, every woman from a university family, can
see it all. The whole scholastic and domestic, studious and tender
life comes back. Faculty meeting! We wait for the tired professor who
had the latest difference to settle with his colleagues, or the newest
breach to soothe, or the favorite move to push; how late he is! He
comes in softly, haggard and spent, closing the door so quietly that
no one shall be wakened by this midnight dissipation. The woman who
loves him most anxiously--be it wife or be it daughter--is waiting for
him. Perhaps there is a little whispered sympathy for the trouble
in the faculty which he does not tell. Perhaps there is a little
expedition to the pantry for a midnight lunch.

My first recollections of Professor Park give me his tall, gaunt,
but well-proportioned figure striding up and down the gravel walks
in front of the house, two hours before time for faculty meeting, in
solemn conclave with my father. The two were friends--barring those
interludes common to all faculties, when professional differences are
in the foreground--and the pacing of their united feet might have worn
Andover Hill through to the central fires. For years I cultivated an
objection to Professor Park as being the chief visible reason why we
had to wait for supper.

I remember his celebrated sermons quite well. The chapel was always
thronged, and--as there were no particular fire-laws in those days on
Andover Hill--the aisles brimmed over when it was known that Professor
Park or Professor Phelps was to preach. I think I usually began with
a little jealous counting of the audience, lest it should prove bigger
than my father's; but even a child could not long listen to Professor
Park and not forget her small affairs, and all affairs except the
eloquence of the man.

Great, I believe it was. Certain distinguished sermons had their
popular names, as "The Judas Sermon," or "The Peter Sermon," and drew
their admirers accordingly. He was a man of marked emotional nature,
which he often found it hard to control. A skeptical critic might have
wondered whether the tears welled, or the face broke, or the voice