It would seem strange that, from the hands of Ann Bartell, Emil Gluck
should have received a college education; but the explanation is simple.
Her ne’er-do-well husband, deserting her, made a strike in the Nevada
goldfields, and returned to her a many-times millionaire. Ann Bartell
hated the boy, and immediately she sent him to the Farristown Academy, a
hundred miles away. Shy and sensitive, a lonely and misunderstood little
soul, he was more lonely than ever at Farristown. He never came home, at
vacation, and holidays, as the other boys did. Instead, he wandered
about the deserted buildings and grounds, befriended and misunderstood by
the servants and gardeners, reading much, it is remembered, spending his
days in the fields or before the fire-place with his nose poked always in
the pages of some book. It was at this time that he over-used his eyes
and was compelled to take up the wearing of glasses, which same were so
prominent in the photographs of him published in the newspapers in 1941.
He was a remarkable student. Application such as his would have taken
him far; but he did not need application. A glance at a text meant
mastery for him. The result was that he did an immense amount of
collateral reading and acquired more in half a year than did the average
student in half-a-dozen years. In 1909, barely fourteen years of age, he
was ready—“more than ready” the headmaster of the academy said—to enter
Yale or Harvard. His juvenility prevented him from entering those
universities, and so, in 1909, we find him a freshman at historic Bowdoin
College. In 1913 he graduated with highest honours, and immediately
afterward followed Professor Bradlough to Berkeley, California. The one
friend that Emil Gluck discovered in all his life was Professor
Bradlough. The latter’s weak lungs had led him to exchange Maine for
California, the removal being facilitated by the offer of a professorship
in the State University. Throughout the year 1914, Emil Gluck resided in
Berkeley and took special scientific courses. Toward the end of that
year two deaths changed his prospects and his relations with life. The
death of Professor Bradlough took from him the one friend he was ever to
know, and the death of Ann Bartell left him penniless. Hating the
unfortunate lad to the last, she cut him off with one hundred dollars.
The following year, at twenty years of age, Emil Gluck was enrolled as an
instructor of chemistry in the University of California. Here the years
passed quietly; he faithfully performed the drudgery that brought him his
salary, and, a student always, he took half-a-dozen degrees. He was,
among other things, a Doctor of Sociology, of Philosophy, and of Science,
though he was known to the world, in later days, only as Professor Gluck.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account