It could also be said with equal truth that Professor Hatcher was one of the few men whose eyes could really “twinkle,” and it is likewise true that he probably fancied himself as somewhat of a twinkler.
Perhaps one fact that made him suspect to professors was his air of a distinguished and mature, but also a very worldly, urbanity. His manner, even in the class-room, was never that of the scholar or the academician, but always that of the cultured man of the world, secure in his authority, touched by fine humour and fine understanding, able, knowing and assured. And one reason that he so impressed his students may have been that he made some of the most painful and difficult labours in the world seem delightfully easy.
For example, if there were to be a performance by a French club at the university of a French play, produced in the language of its birth, Professor Hatcher might speak to his class in his assured, yet casual and urbanely certain tones, as follows:
“I understand Le Cercle Français is putting on De Musset’s Il faut qu’une porte soit ouverte ou fermée on Thursday night. If you are doing nothing else, I think it might be very well worth your while to brush up on your French a bit and look in on it. It is, of course, a trifle and perhaps without great significance in the development of the modern theatre, but it is De Musset in rather good form and De Musset in good form is charming. So it might repay you to have a look at it.”
What was there in these simple words that could so impress and captivate these young people? The tone was quiet, pleasant and urbanely casual, the manner easy yet authoritative; what he said about the play was really true. But what was so seductive about it was the flattering unction which he laid so casually to their young souls—the easy off-hand suggestion that people “brush up on their French a bit” when most of them had no French at all to brush up on, that if they had “nothing else to do,” they might “look in” upon De Musset’s “charming trifle,” the easy familiarity with De Musset’s name and the casual assurance of the statement that it was “De Musset in rather good form.”
It was impossible for a group of young men, eager for sophistication and emulous of these airs of urbane worldliness, not to be impressed by them. As Professor Hatcher talked they too became easy, casual and urbane in their manners, they had a feeling of being delightfully at ease in the world and sure of themselves, the words “brush up on your French a bit” gave them a beautifully comfortable feeling that they would really be able to perform this remarkable accomplishment in an hour
