Page:Six Major Prophets (1917).djvu/228

 an amusing incident occurred, though what it was and how it came about I don't know; possibly because I never thought it best to inquire of any of the few who were in the room at the time. The bare fact is interesting enough, that a young man who had written one of the most brilliant volumes of the times on metaphysics, "Riddles of the Sphinx", and who carried in his pocket a call to teach philosophy at a leading college of Oxford, was flunked in Cornell on his oral examination for Ph.D. in philosophy! Anybody who is curious can pick up half a dozen inconsistent versions of this famous episode on almost any campus. One is, that being fortified by the crinkle of the above mentioned letter over his heart and knowing that an American degree would have no value in England, Schiller did not take the examination seriously and neglected the necessary cramming. Another version of the story is that he turned tables upon his examiners by bringing into action for the first time the pragmatic arguments so much to their discomfiture and bewilderment that he was penalized for these foul blows. But probably the details, if one knew them, would prove to be quite commonplace compared with either of these versions or the more picturesque legends that are in circulation, so it is better to