Thus we were started on our assistant professorship. But always before
and always after, to the students Carl was just "Doc."

I remember a story he told of how his chief stopped him one afternoon at
the north gate to the university, and said he was discouraged and
distressed. Carl was getting the reputation of being popular with the
students, and that would never do. "I don't wish to hear more of such
rumors." Just then the remnants of the internals of a Ford, hung
together with picture wire and painted white, whizzed around the corner.
Two slouching, hard-working "studes" caught sight of Carl, reared up the
car, and called, "Hi, Doc, come on in!" Then they beheld the Head of the
Department, hastily pressed some lever, and went hurrying on. To the
Head it was evidence first-hand. He shook his head and went his way.

Carl was popular with the students, and it is true that he was too much
so. It was not long before he discovered that he was drawing unto
himself the all-too-lightly-handled "college bum," and he rebelled.
Harvard and Germany had given him too high an idea of scholarship to
have even a traditional university patience with the student who, in the
University of California jargon, was "looking for a meal." He was
petitioned by twelve students of the College of Agriculture to give a
course in the Economics of Agriculture, and they guaranteed him
twenty-five students. One hundred and thirty enrolled, and as Carl
surveyed the assortment below him, he realized that a good half of them
did not know and did not want to know a pear tree from a tractor. He
stiffened his upper lip, stiffened his examinations, and cinched forty
of the class. There should be some Latin saying that would just fit such
a case, but I do not know it. It would start, "Exit ----," and the exit
would refer to the exit of the loafer in large numbers from Carl's
courses and the exit from the heart of the loafer of the absorbing love