“Have you? Pleasant things, I hope?”
“Well, all kinds. When I was young, in de old country, I had it hard to git my wife at all, an’ I never had time to t’ink. When I come to dis country I had to work so terrible hard on dat farm to make crops an’ pay debts, dat I was like a horse. Now I have it easy, an’ I take time to t’ink about all dem t’ings.”
St. Peter laughed. “We all come to it, Applehoff. That’s one thing I’m renting your house for, to have room to think. Good morning.”
Crossing the public park, on his way back to the old house, he espied his professional rival and enemy, Professor Horace Langtry, taking a Sunday morning stroll—very well got up in English clothes he had brought back from his customary summer in London, with a bowler hat of unusual block and a horn-handled walking-stick. In twenty years the two men had scarcely had speech with each other beyond a stiff “good morning.” When Langtry first came to the university he looked hardly more than a boy, with curly brown hair and such a fresh complexion that the students called him Lily Langtry. His round pink cheeks and round eyes and round chin made him look rather like a baby grown big. All these years had made little difference, except that his curls were now quite grey, his rosy cheeks even rosier, and his mouth dropped a little at the corners, so that he looked like a baby suddenly grown old and rather cross about it.
Seeing St. Peter, the younger man turned abruptly into a side alley, but the Professor overtook him.
“Good morning, Langtry. These elms are becoming real trees at last. They’ve changed a good deal since we first came here.”
Doctor Langtry moved his rosy chin sidewise over his high double collar. “Good morning, Doctor St. Peter. I really don’t remember much about the trees. They seem to be doing well now.”
St. Peter stepped abreast of him. “There have been many changes, Langtry, and not all of them are good. Don’t you notice a great difference in the student body as a whole, in the new crop that comes along every year now—how different they are from the ones of our early years here?”
The smooth chin turned again, and the other professor of European history blinked. “In just what respect?”
“Oh, in the all-embracing respect of quality! We have hosts of students, but they’re a common sort.”
“Perhaps. I can’t say I’ve noticed it.” The air between the two colleagues was not thawing out any. A church-bell rang. Langtry started hopefully. “You must excuse me, Doctor St. Peter, I am on my way to service.”
The Professor gave it up with a shrug. “All right, all right, Langtry, as you will. Quelle folie!”
Langtry half turned back, hesitated on the ball of his suddenly speeding foot, and said with faultless politeness: “I beg your pardon?”
St. Peter waved his hand with a gesture of negation, and detained the churchgoer no longer. He sauntered along slackly through the hot September sunshine, wondering why Langtry didn’t see the absurdity of their long grudge. They had always been directly opposed in matters of university policy, until it had almost become a part of their professional duties to outwit and cramp each other.
When young Langtry first came there, his specialty was supposed to be American history. His uncle was president of the board of regents, and very influential in State politics; the institution had to look to him, indeed, to get its financial appropriations passed by the Legislature. Langtry was a Tory in his point of view, and was considered very English in his tone and manner. His lectures were dull, and the students didn’t like him. Every inducement was offered to make his courses popular. Liberal credits were given for collateral reading. A student could read almost anything that had ever been written in the United States and get credit for it in American history. He could charge up the time spent in perusing The Scarlet Letter to Colonial history, and Tom Sawyer to the Missouri Compromise, it was said. St. Peter openly criticized these lax methods, both to the faculty and to the regents. Naturally, “Madame Langtry” paid him out. During the Professor’s second Sabbatical year in Spain, Horace and his uncle together very nearly got his department away from him. They worked so quietly that it was only at the eleventh hour that St. Peter’s old students throughout the State got wind of what was going on, dropped their various businesses and professions for a few days, and came up to the capital in dozens and saved his place for him. The opposition had been so formidable that when it came time for his third year away, the Professor had not dared ask for it, but had taken an extension of his summer vacation instead. The fact that he was carrying on another line of work than his lectures, and was publishing books that weren’t strictly textbooks, had been used against him by Langtry’s uncle.
As Langtry felt that the unpopularity of his course was due to his subject, a new chair was created for him. There couldn’t be two heads in European history, so the board of regents made for him a chair of Renaissance history, or, as St. Peter said, a Renaissance chair of history. Of late years, for reasons that had not much to do with his lectures, Langtry had prospered better. To the new generations of country and village boys now pouring into the university in such large numbers, Langtry had become, in a curious way, an instructor in manners—what is called an “influence.” To the football-playing farmer boy who had a good allowance but didn’t know how to dress or what to say, Langtry looked like a shortcut. He had several times taken parties of undergraduates to London for the summer, and
