Professor Strong

“ What is the effect of this method upon our theological seminaries? It is to deprive the gospel message of all definiteness, and to make professors and students disseminators of doubts. Many a professor has found teaching preferable to preaching, because he lacked the initial Christian experience which gives to preaching its certainty and power. He chooses the line of least resistance, and becomes in the theological [190] seminary a blind leader of the blind. Having no system of truth to teach, he becomes a mere lecturer on the history of doctrine. ”

“ Now the worthless, shiftless man, after long years, stood before me, a professor in truth, a professor of life, and perhaps he would give belated expression to what was in his mind that day as he studied the flake of cloud.
Unrolling a portentous manuscript on the pulpit, the lecturer began to read in a mechanical voice. The restless shuffling of feet and a volley of dry coughs soon spoke the hostile attitude of the audience, a longing for the coming of Valerian Harassan. The Professor did not heed them. He read on, pompous phrases such as might have come from the lips of Mr. Pound. ”

“ In our colleges the professors are paid for teaching and for teaching only, while in a foreign university the teaching is wholly secondary, and the professor is expected to announce in his lectures the results of his own study, and not the thoughts of other men. Until the whole status of the professors in our chief universities can be changed, very little original thought or investigation can be expected, and these institutions cannot become what they should be, the soul of the higher life of the nation. ”

“ Professor always looks so kind and pleasant, and not so old as the other professors; then he can tell so many fine stories of by-gone times, which though they almost make one’s hair stand on end, are very pretty to hear. And as to the strange lodger, he is, perhaps, much better in his heart, than he sometimes appears to me. ”

“ Or—
"That is Professor ——," a fellow academician would say to a stranger on the campus as the erect, lithe-limbed young man veered round a corner. "A pillar, sir, a pillar of the institution. The making of a great man, a great man, sir."
But all this was long before the advent of the old professor, long before the day when people ceased to seek him out, to fawn before his talent, and to cherish in memory the brilliant phrases that he was so apt in making. ”

“ Another manifect advantage of public lectures is, that they bring together a number of students of the same class of knowledge. If the professor is a man who labours to improve the growing mind, he has it in his power to kindle an ambition in the breast of his pupils. ”

“ He was the professor of philosophy at the University of California: a great man and a good one, one of those fine academic souls who, not only by their wisdom, but by their character, have a way of stamping themselves upon generations; a speaker of the upstanding class, walking on his own feet and utterly fearless when it came to dashing out on some startling philosophy that had not been borne up by his forebears. ”

“ Hilda! Horace, have you seen——? (In despair.) Oh, it's of no use. Sue! (Enter Sue, l.) Sue, have you seen anything of Hilda?
Sue. She came in here after dinner.
Mrs. T. (looking out r.) . She must have gone out, for her wraps are not in the hall. How unfortunate!
Sue. She will be at home presently. (Looks at basket.) I wouldn't leave that basket there, Celia. If—if Professor Gates should happen to call this evening he would surely stumble over it; the dear man is so near-sighted.
Mrs. T. (moving basket from door) . It's only a few things that I've collected for poor Mrs. McLaffety. ”

“ I said. “We have professors, but they are not divided into faculties, and they certainly do not form the Senatus Academicus, or the highest authority in the University.”
It seems very strange, but it is nevertheless a fact, that as soon as a good tutor is made a professor, he is considered of no good for the real teaching work of the colleges. His lectures are generally deserted; and I could quote the names of certain professors who afterwards rose to great eminence, but who at Oxford were simply ignored and their lecture-rooms deserted. ”

“ But they all do; it clears the brain, and is a salutary irritant,' went on Chriss, who had only seen one professor in her life, and that one a very dingy specimen. 'I should like my professor to be old and sensible, and not young and silly, and he must not care about eating and drinking, or expect me to sew on his buttons, or mend his gloves. Some one ought to invent a mending-machine. ”

“ That type has not disappeared; but the college professor of the last three decades has had, for the most part, special preparation for his work; teaching is, for him, the noblest of professions; except in a few departments, he is a man of the world, not enclosed in a world of his own creation. With wider opportunities, he understands his fellows and can keep in touch with younger men. ”

“ As a matter of fact, much of that busy world still regards a professor as something between a dealer in scientific magic and a crank, and a university as an institution every good American should be honestly proud of and avoid. ”

“ We turn with hearty satisfaction from the tissue of false subtleties which the German professor lays before his youth, to the careful and modest analysis of mental phenomena by which a professor in our northern universities at once enlightens and fortifies the mind. ”

“ We are humbly of opinion that the reputation of the University and Magistrates, the good of the city, and our improvement will all in an eminent manner, be consulted by engaging Dr Gregory to relinquish the Professorship of the Practice for that of the Theory of Medicine, by appointing Dr Cullen, present Professor of Chemistry, to the practical chair, and by electing Dr Black Professor of Chemistry.’ After a dissertation on the qualifications of Dr Cullen, they proceed. ”

“ The new professor will need to be a sublime philosopher, and for obvious reasons he ought to wear spectacles before his senior class. It will be a gloriously optimistic chair, for he can tell his students the glowing truth, that what their faces are to be like presently depends mainly on themselves. ”

“ A man of fine education, superior intelligence, gentlemanly in every sense of the term, of excellent discrimination, one of the best of students, Professor Reason holds a power over those under him seldom attained by men of his profession. Were I a sculptor, and looking for a model of a perfect man in personal appearance, my selection would be Charles L. Reason. As a writer of both prose and poetry he need not be ashamed of his ability. Extremely diffident, he seldom furnishes any thing for the public eye. ”

“ It is not strange, therefore, that many of the professors pursued reputable occupations during their odd hours or that they took students to board. We hear to-day of frequent illustrations of the pursuit of knowledge under difficulty, but certainly during the ages to which I have referred the ardent student, were he undergraduate or professor, put up with an amount of hardship, meagre fare, and trouble of all kinds which would stagger most of the young men of to-day. ”

“ The worthy Professor is severely scientific in his method, and deliberate and cautious in his deductions, the contemplative man discovers as he pursues his theme, and yet the conclusions are, to say the least, remarkable. ”

“ They know, also, that such is the state of academic freedom at our university that, even as we go to press, at least one professor in the academic college—a professor, too, whose discreet devotion to facts, and whose cautious refusal to permit the slightest classroom interpretation thereof, make his potentially excellent subject an inexpressible bore—that at least this one professor is trembling with fear and anger because of official intimation that he had entertained opinions for which his institution did not stand. ”

“ Our institutions of learning have been obsessed with the mere value of the degree of doctor of philosophy. As a consequence, many a young professor is scholarly and expert in his knowledge of his subject, but utterly without ability to impart it with interest. He lacks driving force as well as guiding and regulating force. He seems at times without the capacity for real feeling. He is not alive to the issues of the time in which he lives. ”

“ It is within quite recent years that the conception of endowing research for its own sake, leaving the Research Professor free altogether from direct teaching or with only a few good pupils whose work consisted chiefly in assimilating his ideas and helping with his researches, has become at all widely acceptable. Indirectly, of course, the Research Professor is just as much a teacher as the Teaching Professor, because his results become accessible as he writes them. ”

“ Admirers from all across the surface of the earth produced unremitting and enthusiastic requests—nay, demands—for the wise professor to bestow upon the world his penetrating insights into human nature. As the years passed, however, even though he had been begged repeatedly for the first part, or a first volume, or even a first chapter, he had always answered that he wanted to get the whole work clearly in his head before he put it down on paper. ”

“ They number among their professors the most distinguished men of the century, whether poets, philosophers, or divines. All who lay claim to authorship find in the lecture-room a firm stand and rank in society, as Government is ever ready to insure a life-position to distinguished scholars. To mention only a few examples of men who would scarcely be thought of in a professorial career,—Schiller was Professor of History in Jena, Rückert Professor in Berlin, Uhland in Tübingen. ”

“ The Professor turned his eyes upwards to the starry heavens, and a sense came over him of the eternity and the immensity of Nature, and the demonstrable absence of any intelligence that guided, it. These reflections naturally brought home to him with more vividness the stupendous and boundless importance of Man. ”

“ I was about to telephone, when we found Hilda's note——
Mrs. T. She's tired of antiques——
Mr. T. I have burdened the poor child too much with my hobbies.
Sue. She's gone to Cousin Anne's.
Mrs. T. And Professor Gates has gone after her.
Mr. B. (importantly) . Come, I think we'd better attend to that burglar; he may escape.
Mrs. B. (hysterically) . It's the same one that set off our burglar alarm. Leon said that the cat did it.
Mr. B. That may be. (Seizes telephone book.) I'll 'phone myself. (Starts for door r.; stumbles over Dean's suit-case.) What is this?
Mr. T. The burglar's suit-case. ”

“ Glorious professor, thou shalt be winnowed; every vein of thy profession will be tried to purpose. It is terrible to have it all come tumbling down, and to find nothing but it to bottom upon.
Soaring professor, see to thy waxen wings betimes, which will melt with the heat of temptations. What a misery is it to trade much, and break at length, and have no stock, no foundation laid for eternity in thy soul! ”

“ This was William Sharpey, Professor of Physiology, an original man with a keen eye for originality in others. In days when most English professors were content with a narrow empirical training, he had trudged with his knapsack over half Europe in quest of knowledge, had studied in France, Switzerland, Italy, and Austria, and had made himself acquainted at first hand with the best that was taught in their schools. He was a first-rate lecturer, clear and simple, and took much pains to get to know his pupils. ”

“ I was dragged on by four stout horses through the village to the mountains, for in my heart I was calling to my mother, wishing that her gentle warnings had turned me back before I heard the voice of doom sounding from the depths of Mr. Pound; before I had seen the comic tragedy enacted by Squire Crumple; above all, before the man who saw through the top of his hat had uttered his enigmas about the Professor.
There is something innately repugnant to man in the word "professor." It makes the flesh creep almost as does the thought of the toad or snake. ”

“ The professor who conducted the exercises was a genius, and he came mighty near converting some of the ladies to his extraordinary way of thinking.
I think Harper's wife was anxious to be a convert.
At any rate I heard her eagerly saying to the gentleman with the long hair and the occult eye:
"I have always believed in dreams, professor." ”

“ But, the impulsive Professor, of course, knows better; his mental vision embraces the entire field of the sciences, and he has written admirably and entertainingly upon almost every scientific topic, and moreover he admits, that possibly he sometimes contradicts himself. ”

“ Mrs. T. I'm sure that no burglar would ever want it. My rings are another matter.
Sue. We'll have to sit up all night.
Mr. T. (replacing teapot on mantel) . This shall not stay in the house another day. Fool that I have been to keep it so long.
Mrs. T. I'm more anxious about Hilda—out we know not where, and bandits on every corner. (Noise without.) Ah, here she is now. (Enter r., Hilda and Prof. Algernon Gates in street costumes, the latter perceptibly agitated.) Hilda, I'm so relieved that you have come. Good-evening, Professor. ”

“ Well, sir, I do an odd job once in a while yet, for the colored people, and that keeps me from starving," said the professor, with a smile.
Ishmael fell into a deep thought for a while, and then lifting his head, said:
"Well, professor, you have been in your day and generation as useful a man to your fellow-creatures as any other in this world. You have contributed as much to the comfort and well-being of the community in which you live as any other member of it! ”