let us eat and we let him talk. With the physics prof, who was known
as "Madge the Scientist," our indulgence went still further. We took no
disturbing peanuts there and we let him drone his hour away without an
interruption, except perhaps an occasional snore. We were so good to
him, I think, because of his sense of humor. He used to stop talking now
and then and with a quizzical hopeless smile he would look about the
hall. And we would all smile broadly back, enjoying to the full with
him the droll farce of our presence there. "Go to it, Madge," someone
would murmur. And the work of revealing the wonders of this material
universe would limp quietly along. In examinations Madge gave no marks,
at least not to the mass of us. If he had, over half of us would have
been dropped, so he "flunked" the worst twenty and let the rest through.

The faculty, as a whole, appeared to me no less fatigued. Most of them
lectured as though getting tired, the others as though tired out. There
were a few lonely exceptions but they had to fight against heavy odds.

The hottest fighter of all against this classic torpor was a tall,
joyous Frenchman who gestured not only with his hands but with his
eloquent knees as well. His subject was French literature, but from this
at a moment's notice he would dart off into every phase of French life.
There was nothing in life, according to him, that was not a part of
literature. In college he was considered quite mad.

I met him not long ago in New York. We were both hanging to straps in
the subway and we had but a moment before he got off.

"I have read you," he said, "in the magazines. And from what you write I
think you can tell me. What was the trouble with me at college?" I
looked into his black twinkling eyes.

"Great Scott!" I said suddenly. "You were alive!"

"Merci! Au revoir, monsieur!"

What a desert of knowledge it was back there. Our placid tolerance of
the profs included the books they gave us. The history prof gave us ten
books of collateral reading. Each book, if we could pledge our honor as
gentlemen that we had read it, counted us five in examination. On the
night before the examination I happened to enter the room of one of our
football giants, and found him surrounded by five freshmen, all of whom
were reading aloud. One was reading a book on Russia, another the life
of Frederick the Great, a third was patiently droning forth Napoleon's
war on Europe, while over on the window