"That is Professor ——," a fellow academician would say to a stranger on the campus as the erect, lithe-limbed young man veered round a corner. "A pillar, sir, a pillar of the institution. The making of a great man, a great man, sir."
But all this was long before the advent of the old professor, long before the day when people ceased to seek him out, to fawn before his talent, and to cherish in memory the brilliant phrases that he was so apt in making. For when that day came he was no more noticed in his passage to and fro across the campus than one of the rats that were wont to scamper from building to building in the dead hours of the night.
The transition from the young professor to the old professor was not sudden, but stealthily gradual. He loved the past, its doctrines and its methods. What had been his youth should be, he thought, the youth for all time, and he never knew his error. Little by little, year by year, he became less often the honored guest at a faculty dinner. He clung to the manners of his youth and the younger wives called him an old fogey and smiled when his name was mentioned.
Thus it continued until he became a mere ghost of dead days, an occasional, living reminder of an ancient system of education or method of class-room work long since relegated to that dusty storehouse where are heaped "old things" that have served their usefulness, flung aside to make room for papier maché manikins and varnished maps of pasteboard with the mountains raised to scale and the winding streams indented.
And yet in the official circle of the institution there lingered a certain reverence for the old professor. His sweetness of character, his gentleness of spirit, his humility, made it a sad duty to point the way to him; and so, from month to month, the president's request for his resignation was delayed, and then there occurred a little incident that secured for him, unknowing, another period of service.
The trembling country awaited application of the torch of war. In the college town a meeting was called and the citizenry swarmed into a church where the president of the University was to deliver an address.
On a bench at the front sat the old professor, his face uplifted, drawn with the pain that tore his gentle heart, for the South he loved was proving its disloyalty to the Union that he worshipped.
Through the open windows came a breeze of gentle April that moved the old professor's hair, and he lifted a trembling hand to his high smooth forehead.
Even as the president spoke there was heard a cry in the street that caused the faces of strong men to pale and their eyes to start.
"Sumpter has been fired upon!"