The personality of the president of a large university might be a
matter of indifference to a young instructor, inconspicuous among his
many colleagues; but to be transferred to a full professorship in a
small college was to come into close, daily contact with the ruling
power, a contact from which there was no escape, in which instinctive
likes and antipathies might make or mar a career. At this thought the
young man began to speculate with some intensity upon the personality
indicated thus far to his mind only by the name of Doctor Renshaw.

The very silence of the Hall, which impressed him now not so much by
its beauty as by its solidity and height, invested the presiding genius
of the place with something of sphinxlike mystery. The very faces of
the gargoyles, impenetrable and calm, or grinningly grotesque, gave the
fancy visible outward expression. One monster in particular, with
twisted horns and impish tongue lolling forth between wide, inhuman
teeth, seemed to look upon him with peculiar and malicious amusement.
He experienced the spiritual depression which sometimes seems to
emanate from inanimate things, that mood of self-distrust, that
assurance of being unwelcome, which makes the coming to a strange city
where one's fortunes are to be cast an act requiring courage. Seen
close at hand, the college lost something of that inviting charm with
which a distant view invested it. Though the length of the corporate
life of the institution was not unimpressive from an American
standpoint, the present building was comparatively recent. A thirty
years' growth of ivy was scarcely able to atone for the unencrusted
newness of the stones beneath. There was none of that narcotic
suggestion of grey antiquity which in Oxford or Cambridge rebukes and
stills a personal ambition.

Beyond each small doorway he saw a flight of stone stairs vanishing