OF THIS TIME, OF THAT PLACE
85
But after his departure something was still left of him. The timbre
of his curiou& sentences, the downright finality of so quaint a phrase as
"It is the inevitable fate" still rang in the air. Howe gave the warmth of
his feeling to the new visitor who stood at the door announcing himself
with a genteel clearing of the throat.
"Dr. Howe, I believe?" the student said. A large hand advanced into
the room and grasped Howe's hand. "Blackburn, sir, Theodore Black·
burn, vice-president of the Student Council.
A
great pleasure, sir."
Out of a pair of ruddy cheeks a pair of small eyes twinkled good–
naturedly. The large face, the large body were not so much fat as beefy
and suggested something "typical," monk, politician, or innkeeper.
Blackburn took the seat beside Howe's desk. "I may have seemed
to introduce myself in my public capacity, sir," he said. "But it
is
really
as an
individual that I came to see you. That is to say, as one of your
students to be."
He spoke with an "English" intonation and he went on,
"I
was
once
an
English major, sir."
For a moment Howe was startled, for the roast-beef look of the boy
and the manner of his speech gave a second's credibility to one sense of
his statement. Then the collegiate meaning of .the phrase asserted itself,
but some perversity made Howe say what was not really in good taste
even with so forward
a
student, "Indeed? What regiment?"
Blackburn stared and then gave a little pouf-pouf of laughter. He
waved the misapprehension away.
"Very
good, sir. It certainly is an
ambiguous term." He chuckled in appreciation of Howe's joke, then
cleared his throat to put it aside. "I look forward to taking your course
in
the romantic poets, sir," he said earnestly. "To me the romantic poets
are the very crown of English literature."
Howe made a dry sound, and the boy, catching some meaning in it,
said, "Little as I know them, of course. But even Shakespeare who is so
dear
to us of the Anglo-Saxon tradition is
in
a sense but the preparation
for Shelley, Keats and Byron. And Wadsworth."
Almost sorry for him, Howe dropped his eyes. With some embar–
rassment, for the boy was not actually his student, he said softly,
"Wordsworth."
"Sir?"
"Wordsworth, not Wadsworth. You said Wadsworth."
"Did I, sir?" Gravely he shook his head to rebuke himself for the
error. "Wordsworth, of course-slip of the tongue." Then, quite in com–
mand again, he went on. "I have a favor to ask of you, Dr. Howe. You
lee,
I
began my college course as an English major,"-he smiled–
"as
I
said."
"Yes?"
"But after· my first year I shifted. I shifted to the social sciences.
Sociology and government-1 find them stimulating and very
real."
He
