Of some college students it has been said that, in order to pass their examinations, they will deceive and cheat their kind professors.This may or may not be true.One only can shudder and pass hurriedly on.But whatever others may have done, when young Peter Hallowell in his senior year came up for those final examinations which, should he pass them even by a nose, would gain him his degree, he did not cheat.He may have been too honest, too confident, too lazy, but Peter did not cheat.It was the professors who cheated.
At Stillwater College, on each subject on which you are examined you can score a possible hundred.That means perfection, and in, the brief history of Stillwater, which is a very, new college, only one man has attained it.After graduating he "accepted a position" in an asylum for the insane, from which he was, promoted later to the poor-house, where he died.Many Stillwater undergraduates studied his career and, lest they also should attain perfection, were afraid to study anything else.Among these Peter was by far the most afraid.
The marking system at Stillwater is as follows: If in all the subjects in which you have been examined your marks added together give you an average of ninety, you are passed "with honors"; if of seventy-five, you pass "with distinction"; if Of fifty, You just "pass." It is not unlike the grocer's nice adjustment of fresh eggs, good eggs, and eggs.The whole college knew that if Peter got in among the eggs he would be lucky, but the professors and instructors of Stillwater 'were determined that, no matter what young Hallowell might do to prevent it, they would see that he passed his examinations.And they constituted the jury of awards.Their interest in Peter was not because they loved him so much, but because each loved his own vine-covered cottage, his salary, and his dignified title the more.And each knew that that one of the faculty who dared to flunk the son of old man Hallowell, who had endowed Stillwater, who supported Stillwater, and who might be expected to go on supporting Stillwater indefinitely, might also at the same time hand in his official resignation.
Chancellor Black, the head of Stillwater, was an up-to-date college president.If he did not actually run after money he went where money was, and it was not his habit to be downright rude to those who possessed it.And if any three-thousand-dollar-a-year professor, through a too strict respect for Stillwater's standards of learning, should lose to that institution a half-million-dollar observatory, swimming-pool, or gymnasium, he was the sort of college president, who would see to it that the college lost also the services of that too conscientious instructor.
He did not put this in writing or in words, but just before the June examinations, when on, the campus he met one of the faculty, he would inquire with kindly interest as to the standing of young Hallowell.
"That is too bad!" he would exclaim, but, more in sorrow than in anger."Still, I hope the boy can pull through.He is his dear father's pride, and his father's heart is set upon his son's obtaining his degree.Let us hope he will pull through." For four years every professor had been pulling Peter through, and the conscience of each had become calloused.They had only once more to shove him through and they would be free of him forever.And so, although they did not conspire together, each knew that of the firing squad that was to aim its rifles at, Peter, HIS rifle would hold the blank cartridge.
The only one of them who did not know this was Doctor Henry Gilman.Doctor Gilman was the professor of ancient and modern history at Stillwater, and greatly respected and loved.He also was the author of those well-known text-books, "The Founders of Islam," and "The Rise and Fall of the Turkish Empire." This latter work, in five volumes, had been not unfavorably compared to Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." The original newspaper comment, dated some thirty years back, the doctor had preserved, and would produce it, now somewhat frayed and worn, and read it to visitors.He knew it by heart, but to him it always possessed a contemporary and news interest.
"Here is a review of the history," he would say--he always referred to it as "the" history--"that I came across in my TRANSCRIPT."In the eyes of Doctor Gilman thirty years was so brief a period that it was as though the clipping had been printed the previous after-noon.
The members of his class who were examined on the "Rise and Fall," and who invariably came to grief over it, referred to it briefly as the Fall," sometimes feelingly as "the....
Fall." The" history began when Constantinople was Byzantium, skipped lightly over six centuries to Constantine, and in the last two Volumes finished up the Mohammeds with the downfall of the fourth one and the coming of Suleiman.Since Suleiman, Doctor Gilman did not recognize Turkey as being on the map.
When his history said the Turkish Empire had fallen, then the Turkish Empire fell.Once Chancellor Black suggested that he add a sixth volume that would cover the last three centuries.
"In a history of Turkey issued as a text-book," said the chancellor, "I think the Russian-Turkish War should be included."Doctor Gilman, from behind his gold-rimmed spectacles, gazed at him in mild reproach."The war in the Crimea!" he exclaimed."Why, I was alive at the time.I know about it.
That is not history."