"Right-o. Good-by."
"Good-by, sir," and Hugh left the office determined to rewrite those themes so that "they'd knock Jimmie Henley's eye out." They didn't do exactly that, but they did interest him, and he spent an hour and a half discussing them with Hugh.
That was merely the first of a series of long conferences. Sometimes Henley and Hugh discussed writing, but often they talked about other subjects, not as instructor and student but as two men who respected each other's mind. Before the term was out Henley had invited Hugh to his home for dinner and to meet Mrs. Henley. Hugh was enormously flattered and, for some reason, stimulated to do better work. He found his talks with Henley really exciting, and he expressed his opinions to him as freely and almost as positively as he did to his classmates. He told his friends that Jimmie Henley was human, not like most profs. And he worked at his writing as he had never worked at anything, running excepted, since he had been in college.
The students never knew what to expect from Henley in the class-room. Sometimes he read themes and criticized them; sometimes he discussed books that he had been reading; sometimes he read poetry, not because contemporary poetry was part of the course but because he happened to feel like reading it that morning; sometimes he discoursed on the art of writing; and sometimes he talked about anything that happened to be occupying his mind. He made his class-room an open forum, and the students felt free to interrupt him at any time and to disagree with him. Usually they did disagree with him and afterward wrote violent themes to prove that he was wrong. That was exactly what Henley wanted them to do, and the more he could stir them up the better satisfied he was.
One morning, however, he talked without interruption. He didn't want to be interrupted, and the boys were so taken back by his statements that they could find no words to say anything.
The bell rang. Henley called the roll, stuck his class-book into his coat pocket, placed his watch on the desk; then leaned back and looked the class over.
"Your themes are making me sick," he began, "nauseated. I have a fairly strong stomach, but there is just so much that I can stand—and you have passed the limit. There is hardly a man in this class who hasn't written at least one theme on the glory that is Sanford. As you know, I am a Sanford man myself, and I have my share of affection for the college, but you have reached an ecstasy of chauvinism that makes Chauvin's affection for Napoleon seem almost like contempt.
"In the last batch of themes I got five telling me of the perfection of Sanford: Sanford is the greatest college in the country; Sanford has the best athletes, the finest equipment, the most erudite faculty, the most perfect location, the most loyal alumni, the strongest spirit—the most superlative everything. Nonsense! Rot! Bunk! Sanford hasn't anything of the sort, and I who love it say so. Sanford is a good little college, but it isn't a Harvard, a Yale, or a Princeton, or, for that matter, a Dartmouth or Brown; and those colleges still have perfection ahead of them. Sanford has made a place for itself in the sun, but it will never find a bigger place so long as its sons do nothing but chant its praises and condemn any one as disloyal who happens to mention its very numerous faults.
"Well, I'm going to mention some of those faults, not all of them by any means, just those that any intelligent undergraduate ought to be able to see for himself.
"In the first place, this is supposed to be an educational institution; it is endowed for that purpose and it advertises itself as such. And you men say that you come here to get an education. But what do you really do? You resist education with all your might and main, digging your heels into the gravel of your own ignorance and fighting any attempt to teach you anything every inch of the way. What's worse, you aren't content with your own ignorance; you insist that every one else be ignorant, too. Suppose a man attempts to acquire culture, as some of them do. What happens? He is branded as wet. He is a social leper.