“I certainly have,” Will remarked with a smile, recalling his own compulsory collar-button race.

“I fawncied so.  Well, this Mr. Wilder to whom I refer was doing remarkable work, truly remarkable work in Greek, but for some cause his standing in mathematics was extremely low, and in other branches he was not a brilliant success.”

“What did he do?” inquired Will eager to bring the tedious description to a close, and if possible receive the suggestions for which he had come.

“My recollection is that he finally left college.”

“Indeed!” Will endeavored to be duly impressed by the startling fact, but as he recalled the professor’s statement that the brilliant Wilder was in college something like twenty years before this time, his brilliancy in being able to complete the course and now be out from the college did not seem to him to indicate any undue precocity on the part of the aforesaid student.

“Yes, it was so.  It has been my pleasure to receive an annual letter from him, and I trust you will not think I am unduly immodest when I state that he acknowledges that all his success in life is due to the work he did here in my own classes in Winthrop.  My sole motive in referring to it is the desire to aid you.”

“You think I may be another Wilder?” inquired Will lightly.

“Not exactly.  That was not the thought that was uppermost.  But it may serve as an incentive to you.”

“What is this Wilder doing now?”

“Ahem-m!” The professor cleared his throat repeatedly before he spoke.  “He is engaged in an occupation that brings him into contact with the very best that has been thought and said, and also into contact with some of the brightest and keenest intellects of our nation.”

“He must be an editor or a publisher then.”

“Not exactly.  Not exactly, Mr. Phelps.  He is engaged rather in a mercantile way, though with the most scholarly works, I do assure you.”

“Is he a book agent?”

“Ahem-m!  Ahem-m!  That is an expression I seldom use, Mr. Phelps.  It has become a somewhat obnoxious term, though originally it was not so, I fawncy.  I should hardly care to apply that expression as indicative of Mr. Wilder’s present occupation.”

“And you think if I try hard I may at last become a book agent too?”

“You have mistaken my implication,” said the professor scowling slightly as he spoke.  “I was striving solely to provide an incentive for you.  You may recall what Homer, or at least he whom in our current phraseology we are accustomed to call Homer—­I shall not now enter into the merits of that question of the Homeridae.  As I was about to remark, however, you doubtless may recollect what Homer in the fifth book of his Iliad, line forty-ninth, I think it is, has to say.”

“I’m afraid I don’t recall it.  You see, professor, I had only three books of the Iliad before I came to Winthrop.”