The Old Professor
(A Portrait)
I
Generally he was to be found in one of the galleries of the library, surrounded by tiers on tiers of books that formed for him a veritable barricade of erudition. Or it was as though he sat at the bottom of a well the bricks of which were the solid thoughts of men, themselves gone these many, many years. But there he would sit hour after hour and read, read, read, by the ragged light that filtered down upon him through the unscrubbed glass above. Always he was the first person the librarian met on the broad stone steps when he came over in the morning with his huge key to unlock the great, thick door and throw the building open for another day.
"Good-morning, sir," the old professor would say, in his dry, thin, little voice, and bow stiffly.
"'Morning," the librarian would respond, not so gruffly as characteristically, and bustle away.
Then, on tiptoe, the old professor would pass the swinging doors of baize and silently mount the gray iron stairs to the narrow galleries of the book-room where the life of his waking hours was lived among his unresponsive loves.
For he did love them, his books, whose friendship did not suffer change be the day gay or gray, and with them all about him—he the centre of the chaos of wisdom—he was happy. Among them he lived his simple life in sweet companionship and was joyous for the privilege, for without the books darkness would be his, whilst in them was light for his dim eyes and solace for his gently beating heart. So, day in, day out, in sunshine and in rain, in cold and snow and warmth, the old professor mounted, silently, the gray iron stairs in the childhood of the day, to come down again, as silently, when the lights were extinguished one by one and the broad campus without was wrapped in melancholy black.