leaned across the pulpit and brought
his long arms into action. He became the caustic iconoclast of the
valley.

"We all agree that what I have been reading is nonsense," he said in a
sharp-edged voice. "But I am here in the place of Valerian Harassan, and
it seemed to me that I must give you what you were paying him for. I
have been trying to say the kind of things he would have said. If you
had been able to stand it a little longer, I should have told you that
all the world's a stage and men and women but the players. I might even
have attacked your risibles by anecdotes about my little boy at home and
the southern colonel. Of course, I should have given you some inspiring
thoughts, convinced you that life was a wonderful gift, something to be
treasured and joyously lived, that work was a pleasure, that happiness
came from accomplishing a set task. It's all here in this paper. I
wrote it--and it was easy enough to do--because that is the kind of stuff
you pay for. But it is one thing to write what you don't believe; quite
another to speak it face to face. And yet if I am to speak the truth as
I see it on such a simple little subject as life, I guess I am here on a
fool's errand."

Doctor Todd and Judge Bundy seemed to be of the same mind, for they were
whispering together; debating, I suspected, whether it were better to let
him go on and try to talk fifty dollars' worth or to break abruptly into
his discourse and end it. For so harsh a measure as the last they lacked
courage, and the Professor hurled on, unconscious of the hostile stares
with which they were stabbing him in the back.

Now, optimism was the foundation on which McGraw strove to build up
character. Optimism permeated every part of our life there. From a
narrow environment we looked out hopefully into broadening distances.
Every year some confident youth told us from the college rostrum in
rounded sentences that life was worth living; that sickness, poverty,
disappointment, the countless evils which dog our footsteps, were nothing
in the scale against the boon of opportunity. Every morning in chapel
the doctor voiced our gratitude for the privilege of living and working.
And now over heads that moved in such charged airs the Professor cast his
pall of pessimism. He took his text from Solomon, and found that all was
vanity. It mattered little whether or not what he said was true. He
believed it to be true, and for the moment at least hi