Here the president slackened a little in his walk and looked sideways at the prospective benefactor. But Tomlinson gave no sign.
A second professorial figure passed them on the other side.
"There again," said the president, "that's another case of inefficiency—Professor Shottat, our senior professor of English."
"What's wrong with him?" asked the Wizard.
"He can't handle small classes," said the president. "With large classes he is really excellent, but with small ones the man is simply hopeless."
In this fashion, before Mr. Tomlinson had measured the length of the avenue, he had had ample opportunity to judge of the crying need of money at Plutoria University, and of the perplexity of its president. He was shown professors who could handle the first year, but were powerless with the second; others who were all right with the second but broke down with the third, while others could handle the third but collapsed with the fourth. There were professors who were all right in their own subject, but perfectly impossible outside of it; others who were so occupied outside of their own subject that they were useless inside of it; others who knew their subject, but couldn't lecture; and others again who lectured admirably, but didn't know their subject.
In short it was clear—as it was meant to be—that the need of the moment was a sum of money sufficient to enable the president to dismiss everybody but himself and Dr. Boyster. The latter stood in a class all by himself. He had known the president for forty-five years, ever since he was a fat little boy with spectacles in a classical academy, stuffing himself on irregular Greek verbs as readily as if on oysters.
But it soon appeared that the need for dismissing the professors was only part of the trouble. There were the buildings to consider.
"This, I am ashamed to say," said Dr. Boomer, as they passed the imitation Greek portico of the old Concordia College building, "is our original home, the fons et origo of our studies, our faculty of arts."
It was indeed a dilapidated building, yet there was a certain majesty about it, too, especially when one reflected that it had been standing there looking much the same at the time when its students had trooped off in a flock to join the army of the Potomac, and much the same, indeed, three generations before that, when the classes were closed and the students clapped three-cornered hats on their heads and were off to enlist as minute men with flintlock muskets under General Washington.