As we, the only two Doctors Grenfell extant, marched solemnly back
down the aisle side by side, the antithesis of what doctorates called
for struck my sense of humour most forcibly. I had hired the gorgeous
robes of scarlet box cloth and carmine silk for the occasion, never
expecting to wear them again. But some years later, when yet another
honorary Doctorate, of Laws, was most generously conferred upon me by
a University of our American cousins, I felt it incumbent on me to
uphold if possible the British end of the ritual. A cable brought me
just in time the box-cloth surtout. Commencement ceremonies in the
United States are in June; and the latitude was that of Rome. For
years I had spent the hot months always in the sub-arctic. The
assembly hall was small and crowded to bursting--not even all the
graduating class could get in, much less all their friends. The
temperature was in three figures. The scarlet box cloth got hotter and
hotter as we paraded in and about the campus. My face outrivalled the
gown in colour. I have made many lobster men out of the boiled limbs
of those admirable adjuncts of a Northern diet, but I had never
expected to pose as one in the flesh. The most lasting impression
which the ceremony left on my mind is of my volunteer summer
secretary, who stood almost on my toes as he delivered the valedictory
address of his class. I still see his gradually wilting, boiled
collar, and the tiny rivulet which trickled down his neck as he warmed
to his subject. We were the best of friends, but I felt that glow of
semi-satisfaction that comes to the man who finds that he is no longer
the only one seasick on board.
About this time King Edward most graciously presented me, as one of
his birthday honours, with a Companionship in the Order of St. Michael
and St. George--most useful persons for any man to have as companions,
especially in a work like ours, both being famous for downing dragons
and devils. My American friends immediately knighted me. The papers
and magazines knighted me in both the United States and Canada. But
that got me into trouble, for only kings can make pawns into knights,
and I had to appeal several times to the Associated Press to save
myself being dubbed _poseur_. I have protested at meetings when the
chairman has knighted me; at banquets, when the master of ceremonies
has knighted me. I gave it up lest accusation should arise against me,
when at a semi-religious meeting I uttered a feeble protest against
the title to which I have no right, and my introducer merely repeated
it the more firmly, informing the audience meanwhile that I was "too
modest to use it."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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