he was in his dotage, or (what in their minds was the most crushing charge of all) that he was "way behind the times."

But worst of all was the fact that there was a traitor in the Professor's own camp. He wasn't quite sure in his own mind that his friends were not right, and that he was not idealizing the good old times after the way of universal mankind. Perhaps everything that was was right. At any rate, he saw that his logic wasn't sufficient to prove that it wasn't, though he was quite as sure that his friends could not prove that it was; and he wasn't going to embitter life and waste valuable time by unduly provoking them—not even for the sake of paying his debts—which was a minor consideration, after all.

This time the Professor hung up the Rake to stay, convinced that, at least as far as the present attempt was concerned, he was disqualified from being a successful Raker because he knew too much about the subject.

CHAPTER VI

THE PROFESSOR RECANTS

ALL the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. Perhaps that the words of the myriad-minded poet might be fulfilled, the Professor himself had been guilty of a little acting.

Not on the real stage, of course. No, he had been guilty of representation more serious by far than this: he had acted a part on the literary stage, with results that proved both surprising and disconcerting. Literary dramatics are something less than certain; for there the audience has no play-bill, and your player is often believed to mean not only what he says, but a great deal more-or a great deal less; or the illusion he is trying to create does not succeed at all, and what he thinks he is making to resemble a cloud

appears to the eye of the spectator as very like a camel, or a weasel.

The Professor had not intended to deceive any living soul. He had made up before the literary footlights, just once, as a teacher of English literature, supposing that no one would fail to see through his thin disguise. That was to be the humor of it: it might be mildly amusing for readers to detect the ass in the lion's skin; for the Professor was a classicist, and a teacher of Latin, and did not usually disguise his identity.

But the illusion had seemingly been complete, at least outside the circle of his acquaintance, and he had been writ down, not an ass, but a lion. After one or two appearances, certain of the multitude began to inquire who the professor of English was who wrote those queer things about mud and nails and salaries. The tangled web of deception could have been no greater if he had really practised to deceive.

He indeed soon came to understand why it had been taken for granted he was not a clas

sicist: a letter from a hitherto unknown classical

"It really

colleague had let him into that secret. seems so strange for any of us classical people to be doing anything of this kind," wrote the gentleman, "that I pinched myself to be sure I was awake."

But if the Professor found his readers blameless in this respect, he could not so readily absolve them from the guilt of having been too easily deluded into thinking him a professor of English literature. If he had really wanted them to believe that, he would not have gone about it by manifesting a familiarity with Milton, Shakespeare, and the Bible. That might in the long ago have been the sign by which professors of English literature were known, but not now. No, he would have dropped a few hints on the Celtic question—just enough to make it appear that he had read the majority of the 4,000 dissertations on the subject and scattered through his pages a few references to the sources of Beowulf and the commentaries of Saxo-Gram

maticus, and let it be known that his main interest and his real mission as a scholar was the determination of the number and size of the knot-holes in the stage of the Restoration, and a solution of the question as to whether their distribution was the result of nature pure and simple, or of rules of dramatic art formulated by Aristophanes, put into practice by Menander, and transmitted by Terence.

But this unintentional delusion of the public, though regrettable enough because it defeated his humorous intent, was not the very head and front of the Professor's offense. He had deceived his readers in general, and his fellow professors in particular, in a more serious way.

Here again, he had really intended nothing but a little mild humor; but he felt guilty, nevertheless, and the sting of conscience was lessened only by the reflection that he had but allowed, not actually compelled, them to be deceived. After all, they ought to have known better than to take a professor's word for anything outside