The Mystery of Monastery Farm eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 107 pages of information about The Mystery of Monastery Farm.

The Mystery of Monastery Farm eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 107 pages of information about The Mystery of Monastery Farm.

The chairman, with his usual dignity, put the question, and Edward McLaren, LL.D., was unanimously elected president of Monastery University.

Such election of course created another vacancy in the faculty of the Monastery.  The chairman proceeded at once to state this fact.  Again there was silence.

“Cannot the work of this chair be divided among the other professors for a time?” asked Professor Ware, the Professor of Belles-Lettres.

Mr. Smithson, one of the trustees, moved to adjourn, but the motion was defeated by a large majority.

“What now is the pleasure of the board?” asked the chairman.  Then someone moved to proceed at once to the election of a professor to fill the vacant chair of Greek and Greek Literature.

This motion prevailed, and the chair announced its readiness to hear nominations for the vacant chair.

Abram Smithson, Jr., son of one of the trustees, who graduated the day before, was nominated.  But this nomination met with no second.

There were some indications of surprise, which brought Professor Cummins to his feet, and with some asperity to say that he saw no reasons for expressions of surprise.  It was certainly not the first time that this chair had been filled by a man who had recently graduated.  This made several men smile, among them McLaren, who had been elected to fill that chair the day after his graduation.

Then the bishop stated that during the thirty years in the past he had never made a nomination, but that he now felt inclined to do so; and he would nominate Thomas Sparrow, Ph.D., for the vacant chair of Greek and Greek Literature.  Sparrow was one of their own graduates.  First, in their preparatory course; then in classics, and afterward three years in Heidelberg, where he had won the Philosophy Doctorate.

At this moment the newly-elected president who had been sitting with drooping head, as if he had been rebuked instead of having received their highest honor, arose and stated that he would be greatly pleased if Dr. Sparrow could be elected to fill the vacant chair, but he feared they were too late.  Forty-eight hours ago the joint board of Burrough Road Institute, a noted school in London, had elected him to fill the chair of Belles-Lettres and History, and he feared that Sparrow had before now telegraphed his acceptance.

“Then,” said Quintin, “I move that we elect him anyhow—­even if I have to cross the sea to give Burrough Road satisfaction.”

The inspiration was complete; every man was ready to vote, and did vote for the man who was wanted in London—­and Tom Sparrow became Dr. Sparrow, Professor of Greek and Greek Literature in Monastery University, a result which none ever regretted.

An earnest throng clustered around the newly-elected president, with hearty congratulations.  Not only the trustees, but more than two hundred students, graduates included, who had been nervously waiting outside to hear the news—­rushed impetuously as far as they could into the board room, and seizing McLaren, hoisted him to the shoulders of four sturdy men, and then marched out from the chapel into the park singing boisterously their latest college song: 

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The Mystery of Monastery Farm from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.