Page:My Dear Cornelia (1924).pdf/239

 My sister Alice will go with me for company. We shall fumigate and air the place thoroughly! I have engaged an excellent tutor for the children—a young man from St. Luke's School; and we shall see what can be done to get them back again to their right minds before they go to college in the fall. So do come and help us!"

To anyone acquainted with either Cornelia or California, it should be needless to say that I went. How I went, may interest the curious. Members of the poor-professor class have, as they have frequently explained to the public, many tastes in common with respectable well-to-do-people—tastes which of course they are unable to gratify. But they have one expensive taste, which, with a little craft, they can indulge almost as fully as people with something to live on. I refer to their inclination for running about the country. I shall always remain in the teaching profession because, no matter whither a poor professor wishes to travel, there is always some group of kindly Americans ready to pay his expenses to and from his base, provided he will speak to them on any side of any subject he pleases—loudly and for not more than fifty minutes. There was, in July, a pretty warm educational convention in Los Angeles, designed to