knew an awful lot, and his neighbor agreed with him.
Hugh’s other instructors proved less impressive than Kane; in fact, Mr. Ailing, the instructor in Latin, was altogether disconcerting.
“Plautus,” he told the class, “wrote comedies, farces—not exercises in translation. He was also, my innocents, occasionally naughty—oh, really naughty. What’s worse, he used slang, common every-day slang—the kind of stuff that you and I talk. Now, I have an excellent vocabulary of slang, obscenity, and profanity; and you are going to hear most of it. Think of the opportunity. Don’t think that I mean just ‘damn’ and ‘hell.’ They are good for a laugh in a theater any day, but Plautus was not restrained by our modern con¬ ventions. You will confine yourselves, please, to English undefiled, but I shall speak the modern equivalent to a Roman gutter-pup’s language when¬ ever necessary. You will find this course very il¬ luminating—in some ways. And, who knows? you may learn something not only about Latin but about Rome.”
Hugh thought Mr. Ailing was rather flippant and lacking in dignity. Professor Kane was more like a college teacher. Before the term was out he hated Kane with an intensity that astonished him, and he looked forward to his Latin classes with an eagerness of which he was almost ashamed*
