Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/48

 passengers now call the man "the professor," and two or three times a day he is asked to sing. He always complies promptly. There are half a dozen excellent musicians on board, and when they sing or play, "the professor" is plainly bored. He seems more like a character from a play or book than a real man, and is mild and inoffensive. I talked awhile with him today, and found him an educated man, and apparently quite intelligent, but he is not able to understand that he cannot sing, or play the piano; he cannot realize that all the passengers are making fun of him. I suppose all of us are made fun of when we do not know it, but the case of "the professor" is more than usually glaring. A concert is being arranged for tonight, as this is the last day of the voyage, and "the professor" has been put on the programme, to avoid hurting his feelings. Last night he was the only man on board who dressed for dinner; he put on a swallow-tailed coat much too long for him, and looked odd in other particulars. And after all the trouble he went to, in dressing for dinner, he was compelled to dine at the second sitting. He is a small man, with smooth, white face, and wears his dark hair quite long. The passengers are learning to like him, for he is evidently a gentleman, but none of us can understand why the man so readily consents to make a fool of himself. Perhaps the other passengers make fools of themselves, too, and are as unconscious of it as "the professor." When not playing or singing, he carries an algebra about, and works problems. He has two pairs of spectacles, and is constantly changing them, and forgetting in which pocket he placed the pair he wishes to use next