From that time on the chancellor’s star began to wane. The university had been running into debt, and some time ago the banks refused to carry it any further, and the grand dukes refused to “come across.” The alumni would do nothing, for they share in the detestation with which the chancellor is regarded by the faculty and students. In order to confound his enemies, the chancellor hired a firm of professional money-raisers, who undertook to get six million dollars in thirty-six weeks for Syracuse. But before they had gone very far they realized that no one would put up money, so long as the chancellor remained in office; they told him so, and he dismissed them for incompetence. They sued for thirty-six thousand dollars still due, and it was shown that the chancellor had spent a huge sum of the university’s money on this fiasco, and without getting a penny of return. The debts of the university now amounted to a million and a half, and so matters came to a head. The interlocking trustees had done everything they could think of to persuade the aged whale-hunter to resign, but all their efforts failed, so they worked out a most ingenious scheme. One morning the chancellor opened his copy of the Syracuse “Post-Standard” at breakfast, and there, to his consternation, he found himself confronted with an elaborate front-page article to the effect that he had resigned. There was his picture, and there were columns upon columns of laudatory articles about himself, written by his leading teachers and his leading grand dukes and duchesses. Never was there such a series of panegyrics of a triumphantly retiring chancellor! All the Syracuse newspapers had it, and what was the poor man to do? Should he dump out all that milk and honey into the dirt, and make for himself a horrible scandal? He bowed to his fate, and the trustees appointed Dean Peck as acting chancellor; but shortly afterwards Dean Peck died of heart-trouble, and our whale-hunter moved back into his office. There was no one with authority to keep him out, and he set the university carpenters at work making alterations on his new home and made to his faculty the triumphant announcement: “You see, gentlemen, God has vindicated me; He has struck Peck down, in order that I may return to my position!” Such is the University of Heaven; and we close with the familiar comment: “Heaven for climate, hell for company.” P. S.—While this chapter is being prepared for the printer, the chancellor resigns once more. Whether this time it is permanent, only God knows. CHAPTER LIX AN ACADEMIC TRAGEDY