Free Arcadian Adventures With the Idle Rich by Stephen Leacock

the roof of the building, attaching to it no other condition than that his name should be printed in the weekly reports immediately beside the velocity of the wind. The figure beside him is the late Mr. Underbugg, who founded our lectures on the Four Gospels on the sole stipulation that henceforth any reference of ours to the four gospels should be coupled with his name.”
    “What’s that after his name?” asked Tomlinson.
    “Litt. Doc.?” said the president. “Doctor of Letters, our honorary degree. We are always happy to grant it to our benefactors by a vote of the faculty.”
    Here Dr. Boomer and Dr. Boyster wheeled half round and looked quietly and steadily at the Wizard of Finance. To both their minds it was perfectly plain that an honourable bargain was being struck.
    “Yes, Mr. Tomlinson,” said the president, as they emerged from the building, “no doubt you begin to realise our unhappy position. Money, money, money,” he repeated half musingly. “If I had the money I’d have that whole building down and dismantled in a fortnight.”
    From the central building the three passed to the museum building, where Tomlinson was shown a vast skeleton of a Diplodocus Maximus, and was specially warned not to confuse it with the Dinosaurus Perfectus, whose bones, however, could be bought if anyone, any man of large heart, would come to the university and say straight out, “Gentlemen,what can I do for you?” Better still, it appeared the whole museum, which was hopelessly antiquated, being twenty-five years old, could be entirely knocked down if a sufficient sum was forthcoming; and its curator, who was as ancient as the Dinosaurus itself, could be dismissed on half-pay if any man had a heart large enough for the dismissal.
    From the museum they passed to the library, where there were full-length portraits of more founders and benefactors in long red robes, holding scrolls of paper, and others sitting holding pens and writing on parchment, with a Greek temple and a thunderstorm in the background.
    And here again it appeared that the crying need of the moment was for someone to come to the university and say, “Gentlemen, what can I do for you?” On which the whole library, for it was twenty years old and out of date, might be blown up with dynamite and carted away.
    But at all this the hopes of Tomlinson sank lower and lower. The red robes and the scrolls were too much for him.
    From the library they passed to the tall buildings that housed the faculty of industrial and mechanical science. And here again the same pitiful lack of money was everywhere apparent. For example, in the physical science department there was a mass of apparatus for which the university was unable to afford suitable premises, and in the chemical department there were vast premises for which the university was unable to buy apparatus, and so on. Indeed, it was part of Dr. Boomer’s method to get himself endowed first with premises too big for the apparatus, and then by appealing to public spirit to call for enough apparatus to more than fill the premises, by means of which system industrial science at Plutoria University advanced with increasing and gigantic strides.
    But most of all the electric department interested theWizard of Finance. And this time his voice lost its hesitating tone and he looked straight at Dr. Boomer as he began,
    “I have a boy –”
    “Ah!” said Dr. Boomer, with a huge ejaculation of surprise and relief; “you have a boy!”
    There were volumes in his tone. What it meant was, “Now, indeed we have got you where we want you,” and he exchanged a meaning look with the professor of Greek.
    Within five minutes the president and Tomlinson and Dr. Boyster were gravely discussing on what terms and in what way Fred might be admitted to study in the faculty of industrial science. The president, on learning that Fred had put in four years in Cahoga County Section No. 3 School, and had been head of his class in