vivaciously among the students, like a perpetual challenge to
goodwill.

I cannot say so much about Professor Blackie, for a good reason.
Kelland's class I attended, once even gained there a certificate of
merit, the only distinction of my University career. But although
I am the holder of a certificate of attendance in the professor's
own hand, I cannot remember to have been present in the Greek class
above a dozen times. Professor Blackie was even kind enough to
remark (more than once) while in the very act of writing the
document above referred to, that he did not know my face. Indeed,
I denied myself many opportunities; acting upon an extensive and
highly rational system of truantry, which cost me a great deal of
trouble to put in exercise - perhaps as much as would have taught
me Greek - and sent me forth into the world and the profession of
letters with the merest shadow of an education. But they say it is
always a good thing to have taken pains, and that success is its
own reward, whatever be its nature; so that, perhaps, even upon
this I should plume myself, that no one ever played the truant with
more deliberate care, and none ever had more certificates for less
education. One consequence, however, of my system is that I have
much less to say of Professor Blackie than I had of Professor
Kelland; and as he is still alive, and will long, I hope, continue
to be so, it will not surprise you very much that I have no
intention of saying it.

Meanwhile, how many others have gone - Jenkin, Hodgson, and I know
not who besides; and of that tide of students that used to throng
the arch and blacken the quadrangle, how many are scattered into
the remotest parts of the earth, and how many more have lain down