Often the stint ran
on, till night and sleep ran short. He could not stop to think
whether he were doing the work rightly. He could not get it done
to please him, rightly or wrongly, for he never could satisfy
himself what to do.
The fault he had found with Harvard College as an undergraduate
must have been more or less just, for the college was making a
great effort to meet these self-criticisms, and had elected
President Eliot in 1869 to carry out its reforms. Professor
Gurney was one of the leading reformers, and had tried his hand
on his own department of History. The two full Professors of
History -- Torrey and Gurney, charming men both -- could not
cover the ground. Between Gurney's classical courses and Torrey's
modern ones, lay a gap of a thousand years, which Adams was
expected to fill. The students had already elected courses
numbered 1, 2, and 3, without knowing what was to be taught or
who was to teach. If their new professor had asked what idea was
in their minds, they must have replied that nothing at all was in
their minds, since their professor had nothing in his, and down
to the moment he took his chair and looked his scholars in the
face, he had given, as far as he could remember, an hour, more or
less, to the Middle Ages.
Not that his ignorance troubled him! He knew enough to be
ignorant.
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