There was a pleasure, like the pleasure of dreaming about forgotten joys, in listening to the doctor’s sermon; he began in the same half embarrassed, half awkward way, and fumbled at his Bible leaves, and the poor pinched cushion, as he did long before. But as he went on with his rusty and polemic vigor, the poetry within him would now and then warm his soul into a burst of fervid eloquence, and his face would glow and his hand tremble, and the cushion and the Bible leaves be all forgot, in the glow of his thought, until, with a half cough and a pinch at the cushion, he fell back into his strong but tread-mill argumentation. In the corner above was the stately, white-haired professor, wearing the old dignity of carriage, and a smile as bland as if the years had all been playthings; and had I seen him in his lecture-room, I daresay I should have found the same suavity of address, the same marvelous currency of talk, and the same infinite composure over the exploding retorts. Near him was the silver-haired old gentleman—with a very astute expression—who used to have an odd habit of tightening his cloak about his nether limbs. I could not see that his eye was any the less bright; nor did he seem less eager to catch at the handle of some witticism or bit of satire—to the poor student’s cost. I remembered my old awe of him, I must say, with something of a grudge; but I had got fairly over it now. There are sharper griefs in life than a professor’s talk. Farther on, I saw the long-faced, dark-haired man who looked as if he were always near some explosive, electric battery, or upon an insulated stool. He was, I believe, a man of fine feelings; but he had a way of reducing all action to dry, hard, mathematical system, with very little poetry about it. I know there was not much poetry in his problems in physics, and still less in his half-yearly examinations. But I do not dread them now. Over opposite, I was glad to see still the aged head of the kind and generous old man who in my day presided over the college, and who carried with him the affections of each succeeding class—added to their respect for his learning. This seems a higher triumph to me now than it seemed then. A strong mind, or a cultivated mind, may challenge respect; but there is needed a noble one to win affection. A new man now filled his place in the president’s seat, but he was one whom I had known and been proud to know. His figure was bent and thin—the very figure that an old Flemish master would have chosen for a scholar. His eye had a kind of piercing luster, as if it had long been fixed on books; and his expression—when unrelieved by his affable smile—was that of hard midnight toil. With all his polish of mind, he was a gentleman at heart, and treated us always with a manly courtesy that is not forgotten.