"Yes, it was so. It has been my pleasure to receive an annual letter from him, and I trust you will not think I am unduly immodest when I state that he acknowledges that all his success in life is due to the work he did here in my own classes in Winthrop. My sole motive in referring to it is the desire to aid you."
"You think I may be another Wilder?" inquired Will lightly.
"Not exactly. That was not the thought that was uppermost. But it may serve as an incentive to you."
"What is this Wilder doing now?"
"Ahem-m!" The professor cleared his throat repeatedly before he spoke. "He is engaged in an occupation that brings him into contact with the very best that has been thought and said, and also into contact with some of the brightest and keenest intellects of our nation."
"He must be an editor or a publisher then."
"Not exactly. Not exactly, Mr. Phelps. He is engaged rather in a mercantile way, though with the most scholarly works, I do assure you."
"Is he a book agent?"
"Ahem-m! Ahem-m! That is an expression I seldom use, Mr. Phelps. It has become a somewhat obnoxious term, though originally it was not so, I fawncy. I should hardly care to apply that expression as indicative of Mr. Wilder's present occupation.""And you think if I try hard I may at last become a book agent too?"
"You have mistaken my implication," said the professor scowling slightly as he spoke. "I was striving solely to provide an incentive for you. You may recall what Homer, or at least he whom in our current phraseology we are accustomed to call Homer—I shall not now enter into the merits of that question of the Homeridæ. As I was about to remark, however, you doubtless may recollect what Homer in the fifth book of his Iliad, line forty-ninth, I think it is, has to say."