For the little rustic college rose to its one great occasion.  Bold in their confidence in their dead colleague’s name, the college authorities sent out invitations to all the great ones of the country.  Those to whom Gridley was no more than a name on volumes one never read came because the portrait was by Falleres, and those who had no interest in the world of art came to honor the moralist whose noble clear-thinking had simplified the intimate problems of modern life.  There was the usual residuum of those who came because the others did, and, also as usual, they were among the most brilliant figures in the procession which filed along, one October morning, under the old maples of Middletown campus.

It was a notable celebration.  A bishop opened the exercises with prayer, a United States senator delivered the eulogy of the dead philosopher, the veil uncovering the portrait was drawn away by the mayor of one of America’s largest cities, himself an ardent Gridleyite, and among those who spoke afterward were the presidents of three great universities.  The professor’s family was represented but scantily.  He had had one brother, who had disappeared many years ago under a black cloud of ill report, and one sister who had married and gone West to live.  Her two sons, middle-aged merchants from Ohio, gave the only personal note to the occasion by their somewhat tongue-tied and embarrassed presence, for Gridley’s aunt was too aged and infirm to walk with the procession from the Gymnasium, where it formed, to the Library building, where the portrait was installed.

After the inevitable photographers had made their records of the memorable gathering, the procession began to wind its many-colored way back to the Assembly Hall, where it was to lunch.  Everyone was feeling relieved that the unveiling had gone off so smoothly, and cheerful at the prospect of food.  The undergraduates began lustily to shout their college song, which was caught up by the holiday mood of the older ones.  This cheerful tumult gradually died away in the distance, leaving the room of the portrait deserted in an echoing silence.  A janitor began to remove the rows of folding chairs.  The celebration was over.

Into the empty room there now limped forward a small, shabby old woman with a crutch.  “I’m his aunt, that lived with him,” she explained apologetically, “and I want to see the picture.”

She advanced, peering nearsightedly at the canvas.  The janitor continued stacking up chairs until he was stopped by a cry from the newcomer.  She was a great deal paler than when she came in.  She was staring hard at the portrait and now beckoned him wildly to do the same.  “Look at it!  Look at it!”

Surprised, he followed the direction of her shaking hand.  “Sure, it’s Professor Grid to the life!” he said admiringly.

“Look at it!  Look at it!” She seemed not to be able to find any other words.

After a prolonged scrutiny he turned to her with a puzzled line between his eyebrows.  “Since you’ve spoken of it, ma’am, I will say that there’s a something about the expression of the eyes ... and mouth, maybe ... that ain’t just the professor.  He was more absent-like.  It reminds me of somebody else ... of some face I’ve seen ...”