ofessor, a "bolt," i.e. abstention _en masse_
from a recitation; or a rarer invasion of the town and hostile
demonstration gave us a fillip, but the doctor had so well policed the
college and so completely brought under his moral influence the town,
that no serious row ever took place in my time. Later he told me how
he managed one of the worst early conflicts, in which the students on
one side of the college road, and the town boys on the other, were
arrayed in battle order, determined to fight out the question who were
the better men. The doctor had early notice of the imminent row, and,
fetching a circuit behind the "town," encouraged the boys on that side
with assurances of his impartiality and even his satisfaction with a
little punishment of the students, if they were aggressive. "But,"
said he, "don't begin the fight and put yourselves in the wrong. If my
boys come over, thrash them well, but let them strike the first blow."
Having put them in the strongest defensive attitude, believing that
they had the doctor with them, he went round to the students and
applied the same inducements to the defensive, leaving them under the
persuasion that he entirely approved their fighting, and then he went
home and left them to their conclusions. As time passed and neither
took the offensive, they all cooled off and went home.

The tact with which he dealt with the occasional outbreaks in the
college was very interesting. If it was a case of wanton defiance of
the habitual order, there was a very slight probability of its being
overlooked. A favorite prank of the stealing of the college bell was
invariably punished, first by having a hand-bell rung a little earlier
than regulation hours all through the sections; and, when his secret
police had discovered the offenders, they were punished according to
custom, never very severely, but sufficiently so to make them feel
humiliated. But the mystery of his police was never explained, and
we were always at a loss to conjecture how he discovered the most
elaborately concealed combinations, so that suddenly, even weeks
after, when the culprits thought they had finally escaped detection,
he would announce at prayers that they were to come to his study to
explain. If the outbreak, however, had been in any way justified by
an arbitrary or unwise act of discipline by any of the professors, he
used to ignore it altogether.

The professor of mensuration, a fussy and consequential little fel