In the catalog of the university there were listed a number of courses in “rhetoric and English composition”. They were for the purpose of teaching one how to write, and the catalog set forth convincingly the methods whereby this was done. Thyrsis wished to know all there was to know about writing, and so ne enrolled himself for an advanced course, and went for an hour every day and listened to expositions of the elements of sentence-structure by Prof. Osborne, author of “American Prose Writers” and “The Science of Rhetoric”. The professor would give him a theme, and bid him bring in a five-hundred word composition. Perhaps it was that Thyrsis was lacking in the play-spirit; at any rate he could not write convincingly on the subject of “The Duty of the College Man to Support Athletics.” He struggled for a month against his own impotence, and then went to see his instructor.
“I think,” he said, “I shall have to drop Course A.”
The professor gazed over his spectacles at him.
“I don’t think I am getting any good out of it.”
“But how can you tell what good you are getting?”
“I don’t seem to feel that I am,” said Thyrsis, deprecatingly.
“It is not to be supposed that you would feel it,” said the other--“not at this early stage. You must wait.”
Thyrsis was embarrassed. He was not sure, he said; but he did not think that writing could be taught. Anyway, one had first to have something worth saying--
“Are you laboring under the delusion that you know anything about writing?” demanded the professor. (He had written across Thyrsis’ last composition the words, “Feeble and trivial”.)
“Because if you are, let me disabuse your mind at once. There is no one in the class who knows less about writing than yourself.”
“I think,” said Thyrsis, “it’s because I can’t bring myself to write in cold blood. I have to be interested. I’m sure that is the trouble.”
“I’m sure,” said the other, “that the trouble is that you think you know too much.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” said Thyrsis, humbly. “I’ve tried my best---”
“It is my business to teach students to write. I’ve given my life to that, and I think I know something about it. But you think you know more than I do. That’s all.”
And so they parted. Thyrsis kept a vivid recollection of this interview, for the reason that at a later stage of his career he came into contact with Prof. Osborne again, and got another glimpse of the authoritarian attitude towards the art of letters.