The House with the Green Shutters

by George Douglas Brown

Struthers was a man of lowly stock who, after a ten years' desperate battle with his heavy brains, succeeded at the long last of it in passing the examinations required for the ministry. The influence of a wealthy patron then presented him to Barbie. Because he had taken so long to get through the University himself, he constantly magnified the place in his conversation, partly to excuse his own slowness in getting through it, partly that the greater glory might redound on him who had conquered it at last, and issued from its portals a fat and prosperous alumnus. Stupid men who have mastered a system, not by intuition but by a plodding effort of slow years, always exaggerate its importance—did it not take them ten years to understand it? Whoso has passed the system, then, is to their minds one of a close corporation, of a select and intellectual few, and entitled to pose before the uninitiate. Because their stupidity made the thing difficult, their vanity leads them to exalt it. Woe to him that shall scoff at any detail! To Struthers the Senatus Academicus was an august assemblage worthy of the Roman Curia, and each petty academic rule was a law sacrosanct and holy. He was for ever talking of the "Univairsity." "Mind ye," he would say, "it takes a long time to understand even the workings of the Univairsity—the Senatus and such-like; it's not for every one to criticize." He implied, of course, that he had a right to criticize, having passed triumphant through the mighty test. This vanity of his was fed by a peculiar vanity of some Scots peasants, who like to discuss Divinity Halls, and so on, because to talk of these things shows that they too are intelligent men, and know the awful intellectual ordeal required of a "Meenister." When a peasant says, "He went through his Arts course in three years, and got a kirk the moment he was licensed," he wants you to see that he's a smart man himself, and knows what he's talking of. There were several men in Barbie who liked to talk in that way, and among them Puffy Importance, when graciously inclined, found ready listeners to his pompous blether about the "Univairsity." But what he liked best of all was to stop a newly-returned student in full view of the people, and talk learnedly of his courses—dear me, ay—of his courses, and his matriculations, and his lectures, and his graduations, and his thingumbobs. That was why he bore down upon our great essayist.

"Allow me to congratulate you, John," he said, with heavy solemnity; for Struthers always made a congregation of his listener, and droned as if mounted for a sermon. "Ye have done excellently well this session; ye have indeed. Ex-cellently well—ex-cellently well!"

Gourlay blushed and thanked him.

"Tell me now," said the cleric, "do you mean to take your Arts course in three years or four? A loang Arts course is a grand thing for a clairgyman. Even if he spends half a dozen years on't he won't be wasting his time!"

Gourlay glanced at his father. "I mean to try't in three," he said. His father had threatened him that he must get through his Arts in three years—without deigning, of course, to give any reason for the threat.

"We-ell," said Mr. Struthers, gazing down the Fechars Road, as if visioning great things, "it will require a strenuous and devoted application—a strenuous and devoted application—even from the man of abeelity you have shown yourself to be. Tell me now," he went on, "have ye heard ainything of the new Professor of Exegesis? D'ye know how he's doing?"

Young Gourlay knew nothing of the new Professor of Exegesis, but he answered, "Very well, I believe," at a venture.

"Oh, he's sure to do well, he's sure to do well! He's one of the best men we have in the Church. I have just finished his book on the Epheesians. It's most profound! It has taken me a whole year to master it." ("Garvie on the Ephesians" is a book of a hundred and eighty pages.) "And, by the way," said the parson, stooping to Scotch in his ministerial jocoseness, "how's auld Tam, in whose class you were a prize-winner? He was appointed to the professoriate the same year that I obtained my licence. I remember to have heard him deliver a lecture on German philosophy, and I thought it excellently good. But perhaps," he added, with solemn and pondering brows—"perhaps he was a little too fond of Hegel. Yess, I am inclined to think that he was a little too fond of Hegel." Mrs. Eccles, listening from the Black Bull door, wondered if Hegel was a drink.

"He's very popular," said young Gourlay.

"Oh, he's sure to be popular; he merits the very greatest popple-arity. And he would express himself as being excellently well pleased with your theme? What did he say of it, may I venture to inquire?"