e did indeed learn something, for the
professor's system was exactly suited to such as he. In consequence, his
notebooks were a marvel. But he did not shine so brightly in the oral
examinations, for he feared, with reason, the laughter of his fellows.
In English literature he took down all the dates. But he did not attend
the class on Fridays for fear he should be asked to read, so he never
heard Masson declaim,

"Ah, freedom is a noble thing!"

which some of his contemporaries consider the most valuable part of
their university training.

After Ebenezer Skinner went to the Divinity Hall, he brought the same
excellent qualities of perseverance to bear upon the work there. When
the memorable census was taken of a certain exegetical class, requesting
that each student should truthfully, and upon his solemn oath, make
record of his occupation at the moment when the paper reached him, he
alone, an academic Abdiel,

"Among the faithless, faithful only he,"

was able truthfully to report--_Name_, "Ebenezer Skinner"; _Occupation
at this Moment_, "Trying to attend to the lecture." His wicked
companions--who had returned themselves variously as "Reading the
_Scotsman_," "Writing a love-letter," "Watching a fight between a spider
and a bluebottle, spider weakening"--saw at once that the future of a
man who did not know any better than to listen to a discourse on
Hermeneutics was entirely hopeless. So henceforth they spoke of him
openly and currently as "Poor Skinner!"

Yet when the long-looked-for end of the divinity course came, and the
graduating class burst asunder, scattering seed over the land like an
over-ripe carpel in the September sun, Ebenezer Skinner was one of the
first to take root. He preached in a "vacancy" by chance, supplying for
a man who had been taken suddenly ill. He read a discourse which he had
written on the strictest academical lines for his college professor, and
in the composition of which he had been considerably assisted by a
volume of Mr. Spurgeon's sermons which he had brought home from Thin's
wondrous shop on the Bridges, where many theological works await the
crack of doom. The congregation to which he preached was in the stage of
recoil from the roaring demagogy of a late minister, and all too
promptly elected this modest young man.

But when the young man moved from Simon Square into the Townend manse,
and began to preach twice a Sunday to the clear-headed business men and
the sore-