uninitiate.
Because their stupidity made the thing difficult, their vanity leads
them to exalt it. Woe to him that shall scoff at any detail! To
Struthers the Senatus Academicus was an august assemblage worthy of the
Roman Curia, and each petty academic rule was a law sacrosanct and holy.
He was for ever talking of the "Univairsity." "Mind ye," he would say,
"it takes a long time to understand even the workings of the
Univairsity--the Senatus and such-like; it's not for every one to
criticize." He implied, of course, that he had a right to criticize,
having passed triumphant through the mighty test. This vanity of his was
fed by a peculiar vanity of some Scots peasants, who like to discuss
Divinity Halls, and so on, because to talk of these things shows that
they too are intelligent men, and know the awful intellectual ordeal
required of a "Meenister." When a peasant says, "He went through his
Arts course in three years, and got a kirk the moment he was licensed,"
he wants you to see that he's a smart man himself, and knows what he's
talking of. There were several men in Barbie who liked to talk in that
way, and among them Puffy Importance, when graciously inclined, found
ready listeners to his pompous blether about the "Univairsity." But what
he liked best of all was to stop a newly-returned student in full view
of the people, and talk learnedly of his courses--dear me, ay--of his
courses, and his matriculations, and his lectures, and his graduations,
and his thingumbobs. That was why he bore down upon our great essayist.

"Allow me to congratulate you, John," he said, with heavy solemnity; for
Struthers always made a congregation of his listener, and droned as if
mounted for a sermon. "Ye have done excellently well this session; ye
have indeed. Ex-cellently well--ex-cellently well!"

Gourlay blushed and thanked him.

"Tell me now," said the cleric, "do you mean to take your Arts course in
three years or four? A loang Arts course is a grand thing for a
clairgyman. Even if he spends half a dozen years on't he won't be
wasting his time!"

Gourlay glanced at his father. "I mean to try't in three," he said. His
father had threatened him that he must get through his Arts in three
years--without deigning, of course, to give any reason for the threat.

"We-ell," said Mr. Struthers, gazing down the Fechars Road, as if
visioning great things, "it will require a strenuous and devoted
application--a strenuous and devoted app