For the Oxford professor and his whole manner of being I
have nothing but a profound respect. There is indeed the greatest
difference between the modern up-to-date American idea of a professor
and the English type. But even with us in older days, in the bygone
time when such people as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow were professors,
one found the English idea; a professor was supposed to be a
venerable kind of person, with snow-white whiskers reaching to his
stomach. He was expected to moon around the campus oblivious of the
world around him. If you nodded to him he failed to see you. Of money
he knew nothing; of business, far less. He was, as his trustees were
proud to say of him, "a child."
On the other hand he contained within him a reservoir of learning
of such depth as to be practically bottomless. None of this learning
was supposed to be of any material or commercial benefit to anybody.
Its use was in saving the soul and enlarging the mind.
At the head of such a group of professors was one whose beard was
even whiter and longer, whose absence of mind was even still greater,
and whose knowledge of money, business, and practical affairs was
below zero. Him they made the president.
All this is changed in America. A university professor is now a busy,
hustling person, approximating as closely to a business man as he can
do it. It is on the business man that he models himself.
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