It was well for the particular freshman whose examination is here described that his first experience with a professor was with such a man.  It gave confidence, and set him thinking.  With others of the examiners he did not, in each instance, fare so happily.  What thousands of men of the world there are to-day who remember with something like a shudder still the inquisition of Prof. ——­, whose works on Greek are text-books in many a college; or the ferocity of Prof. ——­, to whom calculus was grander than Homer!  But the woes of freshmen are passing things.

What Grant Harlson did in college need not be told at any length.  He but plucked the fruit within his reach, not over-wisely in some instances, yet with some industry.  He had, at least, the intelligence to feel that it is better to know all of some things than a little of all things, and so surpassed, in such branches as were his by gift and inclination, and but barely passed in those which went against the mental grain.

It may be the professor of English literature had something to do with this.  Between Grant and him there grew up a friendship somewhat unusual under all the circumstances.  One day the professor was overtaken by the student upon a by-way of the campus, and asked some questions regarding certain changed hours of certain recitations, and, having answered, detained the questioner carelessly in general conversation.  The elder became interested—­perhaps because it was a relief to him to talk with such a healthy animal—­and, at the termination of the interview, invited him to call.  There grew up rapidly, binding these two, between whose ages a difference of twenty years existed, a friendship which was never broken, and which doubtless affected to an extent the student’s ways, for he at least accepted suggestions as to studies and specialties.  This relationship resulted naturally in transplanting to the mind of the youth some of the fancies and, possibly, the foibles of the man.  One incident will illustrate.

The student, during a summer vacation, had devoted himself largely to the copying of Macaulay’s essays, for, in his teens, one is much impressed by the rolling sentences of that great writer.  Upon his return Harlson told of his summer not entirely wasted, and expressed the hope that he might have absorbed some trifle of the writer’s style.

The professor of English literature laughed.

“Better have taken Carlyle’s ‘French Revolution’ or any one of half a dozen books which might be named.  Let me tell a little story.  Some time ago a fellow professor of mine was shown by a Swedish servant girl in his employ a letter she had just written, with the request that he would correct it.  He found nothing to correct.  It was a wonderfully clear bit of epistolary literature.  He was surprised, and questioned the girl.  He learned that, though well educated, she knew but little English, and had sought the dictionary, revising her own letter by selecting the shortest words to express the idea.  Hence the letter’s strength and clearness.  Stick to the Saxon closely.  Macaulay will wear off in time.”  And this was better teaching than one sometimes gets in class.