Thinking of this, I was shown into the study of the great teacher of ethics, and as I shook hands I met the keen brown eyes of—Frank Borderson. He had both my hands and shook them warmly.
"Well, John! It is good to see you again. How well you look; how little you have changed! It's a good world you've come back to, isn't it?"
"You are the most astonishing thing I've seen so far," I replied. "Do you really mean it? Are you—a Professor of Ethics?"
"When I used to be a God-forsaken rascal, eh? Yes, it's really so. I've taught Ethics for twenty years, and gradually pushed along to this position. And I was a good deal farther off than Tibet, old man."
I was tremendously glad to see him. It was more like a touch of the old life than anything I had yet found—except Nellie, of course. We spoke for some time of those years of boyhood; of the good times we had had together; of our common friends.
He kept me to dinner; introduced me to his wife, a woman with a rather sad, sweet face, which seemed to bear marks of deep experience; and we settled down for an evening's talk.
"I think you have come to the right person, John; not only because of my special studies, but because of my special line of growth. If I can tell you what changed me, so quickly and so wholly, you won't be much puzzled about the others, eh?"
I fully agreed with him. The boy I knew was clever enough to dismiss all theology, to juggle with philosophy and pick ethics to pieces; but his best friends had been reluctantly compelled to admit that he had "no moral character." He had, to my knowledge, committed a number of unquestionable "sins," and by hearsay I knew of vices and crimes that followed. And he was Dr. Borderson!
"I'll take myself as a sample, Whitman fashion," said he. "There I was when you knew me—conceited, ignorant, clever, self-indulgent, weak, sensual, dishonest. After I was turned out of college I broke a good many laws and nearly all the commandments. What was worse, in one way, was that my 'wages' were being paid me in disease—abominable disease. Also I had two drug habits—alchohol and cocaine. Will you take me as a sample?"
I looked at him. He had not the perfect health I saw so much of in the younger people; but he seemed in no way an invalid, much less a drug victim. His eyes were clear and bright, his complexion good, his hand steady, his manner assured and calm.