When he began to inform me, with that interesting air of originality which often accompanies the platitudes of our best citizens, that college professors were "mere visionary idealists—all academic theories; no practical knowledge of the world"—and so on, as usual—I made bold to interrupt:
"Why, in the name of common sense, then, do you send your own sons to them to be prepared for it! Is such a policy safe? Is it sane? Is it practical?" And I am afraid I laughed in the great man's face.
He only blinked and said "Humph!" in a thoroughly businesslike manner; but throughout the rest of the evening he viewed me askance, as though I had become a dangerous theorist too—by marriage. So I turned my back on him and wondered why such a large and brilliant dinner was given for such a dull and uninteresting Philistine!
This shows, by the way, how young and ignorant I was. The mystery was explained next day, when it was intimated to me that I had made what is sometimes called, even in refined college circles, a break. Young professors' wives were not expected to trifle with visitors of such eminent solvency; but I had frequently heard the materialistic tendencies of the age condemned in public, and had not been warned in private that we were all supposed to do our best to work this materialist for a million, with which to keep up the fight against materialism.
In the cloistered seclusion of our universities, dedicated to high ideals, more deference is shown to the masters of high finance than to the masters of other arts—let me add not because Mammon is worshiped, but because he is needed for building cloisters.
The search for truth would be far more congenial than the search for wealth; but, so long as our old-fashioned institutions remain, like old-fashioned females, dependent for their very existence on the bounty of personal favor, devious methods must be employed for coaxing and wheedling money out of those who control it—and therefore the truth.
I was a slender bride and had a fresh, becoming trousseau. He was a heavy-jowled banker and had many millions. I was supposed to ply what feminine arts I could command for the highly moral purpose of obtaining his dollars, to be used in destroying his ideals.
Well, that was the first and last time I was ever so employed. Despite the conscientious flattery of the others he gruntingly refused to give a penny. And—who knows—perhaps I was in part responsible for the loss of a million! A dreadful preface to my career as a college professor's wife.
However, before pursuing my personal confessions, I must not overlook the most common and comic characteristic of the college professor we all know and love in fiction. I refer to his picturesque absent-mindedness. I had almost forgotten that; possibly I have become absent-minded by marriage too! Is not the dear old fellow always absent-minded on the stage? Invariably and most deliriously! Just how he manages to remain on the Faculty when absent-minded is never explained on the program; and it often perplexes us who are behind the scenes.
I tell my husband that, in our case, I, as the dowdy and devoted wife, am supposed to interrupt his dreams—they always have dreams—remove his untidy dressing gown—they always wear dressing gowns—and dispatch him to the classroom with a kiss and a coat; but how about that great and growing proportion of his colleagues who, for reasons to be stated, are wifeless and presumably helpless?