“Were both educationists, I know,” said the Tutor: “but not, properly speaking, in the same way. However—you have not studied the father of
poetry in the original, it would appear. Any Xenophon, perhaps? or Cæsar?”
“I don’t think I know much about Xenophon,” replied the young man, “but I have a friend who failed in Cæsar for the Cambridge Locals, and he said it was pretty easy.”
“Do you know any Greek or Latin at all?”
“Well, as I came along I bought a Delectus: I was told it might be helpful for attaining the highest honours.”
“Exactly. You thought it might be helpful—of course, of course. You were quite right—perfectly, perfectly correct,” the Tutor murmured, with a faraway look in his eyes. Then he collected himself, and turned to the other aspirant. “And you, sir—pardon me, I didn’t quite catch—eh? Oh, thanks!—what, may I ask, are the conditions on which you hold your Scholarship?”
“My education,” replied the heavy young man, “was completed at the Jabez H. Brown University of Thessalonica, Maine, U.S.A. I am a recipient of a Scholarship under the provisions of the will of the Right Honourable Cecil J. Rhodes, the eminent philanthropist. No doubt, Professor, you will have heard of him.”
“Ah! a Rhodes Scholar,” said the Tutor.
“That is better—much better. You will, no doubt, study the Classics. There are those (I am well aware) who are disposed to object to modern American Scholarship as an excessive attention to minutiæ: but personally, I confess, I am no enemy even to a meticulous exactness, which alone can save us from an incurious and slipshod rhetoric! . . . And what, then, are the points of scholarship which it has been your endeavour to elucidate? Have you followed in the steps of the lamented Professor Drybones of Chicago, who died before he could prove, by a complete enumeration of all the instances in Greek literature, that γάρ is never the first word of a sentence? Have you—”
“Pardon me, Professor,” put in the Rhodes Scholar. “That ain’t my platform at all. I may say, I don’t take any stock in literatoor.”