“This is no case for me,” said Jawn decisively. “He’s got a screw loose. It’s hardware he needs,” Jawn tapped his head, “and I’m not in the business. Besides, I’m on my vacation. You doctor him. I’m too busy. I’m specializing on the sister.”
Jawn was obstinately determined to enjoy his vacation. He was willing to psychologize all winter, he said, and in the Summer School when compelled by the Dean, but vacation means “to vacate,” he protested; and that means to let your mind loaf, and be silly, and wallow in its uncultivated, native soil.
Jawn was a very modern type of American “professor” and corresponded not at all to the conventional conception. He was not beetle-eyed, nor ponderous, nor absent-minded, a picture we have borrowed from Europe where dignity is demanded of the professor, and all the pompous qualities of solemnity. The European sort exists in America, too—he was the original settler!—but side by side is a distinctive American variety. The American type came in in the late ’80’s and early ’90’s when college teachers were ceasing to be so stiffly clerical in physical and mental cut; he arrived just at the time, too, when mere opinions in a professor began to be suggestive of lazy charlatanism, a time when all this new cult of laboratory research, exact measuring, statistical proof, historical evidence from first-hand sources, was beginning to be demanded of the man who professed anything.
This new sort of professor is quite apt to look on the professional title as a joke, except in so far as it is a distinction that carries real difference in wages. We remember with what sturdy and solemn posing the professor of yester-year would wear his titles; how deftly he would correct the forgetful who lapsed into “Mr.”! How he would announce himself as “Professor” with such simple faith in its power to awe the unrefined! Jawn was a perfect example of the newer school which, we fear, has gone to the other extreme: it lacks terribly in dignity; in fact, it suspects all dignity of a subtle attempt to counterfeit intelligence—which is often the case!—it is careless of mere external show, but it toils like an Edison. It works hard when it works, and it plays with the abandon of a nest of puppies; it smokes, it drinks, it sings the wildest songs at purely male meetings; it employs the colloquialisms of the street; it tosses ball with the boys on the town lot; and, to oblige a friend, it may stay up all night to play poker. And on a holiday—which may be a night off, or a week-end—it “cuts up” as if life were just beer and skittles.
This modern investigator-professor is the despair of his European confrères, for, we must admit it, he lacks culture. He knows so much of one thing that he elects to know nothing of anything else, and cheerfully owns up; indeed every other speech is a confession of some sort of ignorance. And he lacks, he woefully lacks polish; and often—although there are tailored dandies among them—he lacks simple brushing and scouring!
In his clinics Jawn Galloway tended his awkward flock of wayward children—the mentally twisted and the morally awry—with the dignity and the sweetness of a Roman cardinal. He was genial and sympathetic, but he was also strong and masterful. In the clinic no one thought of him with other feeling than that of respect for his wise mind, his deft hand, his atmosphere of confidence. Over twenty thousand cases of wrong-mindedness had come under his observation; he had held himself to a laboratory vigil of from twelve to fourteen hours a day for months at a time; and his “notes” had formulated a new theory and practice in dealing with the abnormal mind. In his clinics he was learned without pedantry, and wise without snobbishness; but off duty he was a perpetual sophomore—often, we fear, equally as irritating to mature persons. His boisterous laughter got on one’s nerves; his persistent doggerel, his bubbling vivacity, his everlasting acting-a-part stirred many a less highly strung person to combativeness. “He a professor!” was the commonest remark voiced by fellow vacationists who did not know of his serious work. Of course they could not be aware that his perfected scale for measuring the intelligence of morons had brought him the approval of the most serious-minded men in Europe and America.
His friends had often to apologize for Jawn Galloway, for the type is not yet conventionalized. Our comic papers continue to make the professor a deep-browed simpleton, and our novels and our drama perpetuate the picture; but that sort is as obsolete as Ichabod Crane.
“All right,” Richard nodded at Jawn’s persistent flippancy. “I’ll wait. You’re resting—I know you! You’re just skylarking to get your mind cleaned up. I’ll wait. And one of these days Walter’s case will seize you as it has me. You’ll get fascinated. I know you! And then we’ll get something out of this visit; you’ll sing another song instead——”
“Instead of just Lewis-carrolling, eh?” Jawn laughed.
“All right,” laughed Richard in turn. “I’ll wait. But you’ll work for your wittles yet, old boy!”