Professor How Could You!

1924. The book begins: Now that my affairs are brought again to a good posture I am looking back on the strange adventures of a time called by a colleague-a cheap fellow thinking himself a wit-my impromptu sabbatical. The perils I braved, the tumults I survived, have already frozen to the fixity of a map in relief, so that their contours may be traced by remembering finger tips in all safety-since there can be no shifting to a new confusion. And in this security I am conscious of a lifting elation. I hope I may not become merely smug, but not again, I fancy, will certain associates traduce me as one fossilized, dry-and-dusty, aloof-from-life. Not again, I believe, will one of this envious cabal-the would-be wit whom in kindness I shall not name-report the theory of my teaching to be that history ceased abruptly and forever with the Renaissance.