college. Ebenezer was a lad
of ambition. His first session was as bare of interest and soul as a
barn without the roof. He alternated like a pendulum between Simon
Square and the Greek and Latin class-rooms. He even took the noted
Professor Lauchland seriously, whereupon the latter promptly made a
Greek pun upon his name, by which he was called in the class whenever
the students could remember it. There was great work done in that
class-room--in the manufacture of paper darts. Ebenezer took no part in
such frivolities, but laboured at the acquisition of such Greek as a
future student of theology would most require. And he succeeded so well
that, on leaving, the Professor complimented him in the following terms,
which were thought at the time to be handsome: "Ye don't know much
Greek, but ye know more than most of your kind--that is, ye can find a
Greek word in the dictionary." It was evident from this that Ebenezer
was a favourite pupil, but some said that it was because Lauchland was
pleased with the pun he made on the name Skinner. There are always
envious persons about to explain away success.

Socially, Ebenezer confined himself to the winding stairs of the
University, and the bleak South-side streets and closes, through which
blew wafts of perfume that were not of Arcady. Once he went out to
supper, but suffered so much from being asked to carve a chicken that he
resolved never to go again. He talked chiefly to the youth next to him
on Bench Seventeen, who had come from another rural village, and who
lived in a garret exactly like his own in Nicolson Square.

Sometimes the two of them walked through the streets to the General Post
Office and back again on Saturday nights to post their letters home, and
talked all the while of their landladies and of the number of marks each
had got on Friday in the Latin version. Thus they improved their minds
and received the benefits of a college education.

At the end of the session Ebenezer went back directly to his village on
the very day the classes closed and he could get no more for his money;
where, on the strength of a year at the college, he posed as the learned
man of the neighbourhood. He did not study much at home but what he did
was done with abundant pomp and circumstance. His mother used to take in
awed visitors to the "room," cautioning them that they must not disturb
any of Ebenezer's "Greek and Laitin" books, lest in this way the career
of her darling might be