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