Читать книгу The Goose-step: A Study of American Education онлайн

19 страница из 178

Brander Matthews was a new type to me, the literary “man of the world.” His mind was a store-house of gossip about the theater and the stage-world, and I was interested, and eagerly read the plays. I knew that Brander was not my kind of man, that his world was not for me; but what kind of world I was going to choose, or to make for myself, I did not at that time know. As I dwell on these days, I see before me his loose, rather shambling figure, with a queerly shaped brown beard and a cigarette dangling from the lower lip. I do not know how this dangling was contrived, but I doubt if I ever saw the professor at a lecture that he did not have that cigarette in position as he talked. Brander is the beau ideal of the successful college professor, metropolitan style; a clubman, easy-going and cynical, but not too much so for propriety; wealthy enough to be received at the dinners of trustees, and witty enough to be welcome anywhere. He is a bitter reactionary, and has become one of President Butler’s most active henchmen; his reputation as author of more than forty books is made use of by the New York “Times” for an occasional job of assassinating a liberal writer.