He had known the president for forty-five years, ever since he was a fat little boy with spectacles in a classical academy, stuffing himself on irregular Greek verbs as readily as if on oysters.
But it soon appeared that the need for dismissing the professors was only part of the trouble.

There were the buildings to consider.
"This, I am ashamed to say," said Dr.Boomer, as they passed the imitation Greek portico of the old Concordia College building, "is our original home, the _fons et origo_ of our studies, our faculty of arts." It was indeed a dilapidated building, yet there was a certain majesty about it, too, especially when one reflected that it had been standing there looking much the same at the time when its students had trooped off in a flock to join the army of the Potomac, and much the same, indeed, three generations before that, when the classes were closed and the students clapped three-cornered hats on their heads and were off to enlist as minute men with flintlock muskets under General Washington.
But Dr.Boomer's one idea was to knock the building down and to build on its site a real _facultas_ ten storeys high, with elevators in it.
Tomlinson looked about him humbly as he stood in the main hall.

The atmosphere of the place awed him.

There were bulletins and time-tables and notices stuck on the walls that gave evidence of the activity of the place.

"Professor Slithers will be unable to meet his classes today," ran one of them, and another "Professor Withers will not meet his classes this week," and another, "Owing to illness, Professor Shottat will not lecture this month," while still another announced, "Owing to the indisposition of Professor Podge, all botanical classes are suspended, but Professor Podge hopes to be able to join in the Botanical Picnic Excursion to Loon Lake on Saturday afternoon." You could judge of the grinding routine of the work from the nature of these notices.