students throughout the State got wind of what was going on, dropped their various businesses and professions for a few days, and came up to the capital in dozens and saved his place for him.
The opposition had been so formidable that when it came time for his third year away, the Professor had not dared ask for it, but had taken an extension of his summer vacation instead.
The fact that he was carrying on another line of work than his lectures, and was publishing books that weren’t strictly textbooks, had been used against him by Langtry’s uncle.
As Langtry felt that the unpopularity of his course was due to his subject, a new chair was created for him. There couldn’t be two heads in European history, so the board of regents made for him a chair of Renaissance history, or, as St. Peter said, a Renaissance chair of history. Of late years, for reasons that had not much to do with his lectures, Langtry had prospered better. To the new generations of country and village boys now pouring into the university in such large numbers, Langtry had become, in a curious way, an instructor in manners—what is called an “influence.” To the football-playing farmer boy who had a good allowance but didn’t know how to dress or what to say, Langtry looked like a shortcut. He had several times taken parties of undergraduates to London for the summer, and they had come back wonderfully brushed up. He introduced a very popular fraternity into the university, and its members looked after his interests, as did its affiliated sorority. His standing on the faculty was now quite as good as St. Peter’s own, and the Professor wondered what Langtry still had to be sore about.
What was the use of keeping up the feud? They had both come there young men, fighting for their places and their lives; now they were not very young any more; they would neither of them, probably, ever hold a better position.