BUSH RECALLS AWE AND GRATITUDE AROUSED BY SCHOLAR'S MAJESTY

One can hardly avoid saying what does pot need to be said, that Professor Kittredge was probably the most widely learned literary scholar this country has had, and that his death marks the end of an era in scholarship as well as in the history of Harvard University.

Thousands of pupils will retain the memory of the majestic figure and the electric personality which so long dominated English 2 and which gave birth to a whole cycle of picturesque anecdotes.

A smaller though a large number of graduate students, who perhaps like myself did not have the good fortune to sit in Mr. Kittredge's undergraduate courses, will remember both the awe and the gratitude that he inspired.

My own memories center about two scenes, which I may mention because they are so vivid to me and because they could be paralleled in the experience of many others. The first was a meeting of hi seminar at 8 Hilliard Street, at which I was the first member of the course to read a paper.

After distributing cigars, and "cigarettes for the effeminate", Mr. Kittredge sat and smoked, and listened with well-simulated interest while I, dripping with perspiration like a municipal sprinkler, read on and on, and while in the semi-darkness my fellow students heaved oc-occasional gusty sights of weariness; but one's reward came with a few benign words of approval which seemed an Olympian benedicton.

The second scene was my doctoral oral. For early an hour I wrought havoc among the Indo-European vowels and consonants, like the demented Ajax with the sheep, and though that all was over, Bust across the gloom came a ray of hope in the form of a question from Mr. Kittredge which suggested that the questioner had not yet put on the black cap

"Who is the wildest Chaucerian scholar in America, outside of this room?"

And when such affairs ended, and the candidate, even if passed, was in a slough of despond over his showing, Mr. Kittredge, whose own vast strength was accompanied by mersy could pour out grace abounding upon the chief of sinners.