To his face they called him
'sir,' a title of respect which they had never thought to give to any
man alive.
"By the end of that first academic year every man under him would have
followed 'the Lieut.' straight into a prairie fire, and would have kept
step while doing it."
As he gradually got his group of officers licked into shape, he found
less to do personally. So he promptly complained to the Chancellor, to
this effect, and asked, like Oliver Twist, for more.
"After a moment's stupefaction (the Lieut. was then doing five times
the work that any officer before him had ever done) the Chancellor
burst into a great laugh and suggested that the Lieut. should take the
law course in the law school of the University. He added that if two
men's work was not enough for him, he might do three men's, and teach
some of the classes in the Department of Mathematics. Without changing
his stride in the least, the young officer swept these two occupations
along with him, bought some civilian clothes and a derby hat, and
became both professor and student in the University, where he was also
military attache.
"During the next two years he ate up the law course with a fiery haste
which raised the degree of class work to fever heat. Those who were
fellow students with him, _and survived_, found the experience
immensely stimulating.
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