Carl, by the way, happened to be the secretary of his class, and his popularity with dear old classmates became a nuisance in our tiny home. I remember one well-known bachelor of arts who answered to the name of Spud, a rather vulgar little man. Comfortably seated in Carl's study one morning, with a cigar in his mouth, Spud began:
"My, what a snap! A couple of hours' work a day and three solid months' vacation! Why, just see, here you are loafing early in the morning! You ought to come up to the city! Humph! I'd show you what real work means."
Now my husband had been writing until two o'clock the night before, so that he had not yet made preparation for his next hour. It was so early indeed that I had not yet made the beds. Besides, I had heard all about our snap before and it was getting on my nerves.
"Carl would enjoy nothing better than seeing you work," I put in when the dear classmate finished; "but unfortunately he cannot spare the time."
Spud saw the point and left; but Carl, instead of giving me the thanks I deserved, gave me the first scolding of our married life! Now isn't that just like a husband?
Of course it can be proved by the annual catalogue that the average member of the Faculty has only about twelve or fourteen hours of classroom work a week—the worst-paid instructor more; the highest-paid professor less. What a university teacher gives to his students in the classroom, however, is or ought to be but a rendering of what he acquires outside, as when my distinguished father tried one of his well-prepared cases in court. Every new class, moreover, is a different proposition, as I once heard my brother say of his customers.
That is where the art of teaching comes in and where Carl excelled. He could make even the "dismal science," as Carlyle called economics, interesting, as was proved by the large numbers of men who elected his courses, despite the fact that he made them work hard to pass. Nor does this take into account original research and the writing of books like Carl's scholarly work on The History of Property, on which he had been slaving for three solid summers and hundreds of nights during termtime; not to speak of attending committee meetings constantly, and the furnace even more constantly. The latter, like making beds, is not mentioned in the official catalogue. I suppose such details would not become one's dignity.
As in every other occupation, some members of the Faculty do as little work as the law requires; but most of them are an extremely busy lot, even though they may, when it suits their schedule better, take exercise in the morning instead of the afternoon—an astonishing state of affairs that always scandalizes the so-called tired business man.
As for Carl, I was seeing so little of him except at mealtimes that I became rather piqued at first, being a bride. I felt sure he did not love me any more!
"Do you really think you have a right to devote so much time to outside work?" I asked one evening when I was washing the dishes and he was starting off for the university library to write on his great book.—It was the indirect womanly method of saying: "Oh, please devote just a little more time to me!"—"You ought to rest and be fresh for your classroom work," I added.