This one
was handed down off the shelf in a more or less chaotic condition, and for
a period of years betrayed considerable doubt as to its own intentions,
undecided whether they were classical or technical; and in the settlement
of that doubt lay the secret of the past of the one man in Plattville so
unhappy as to possess a past. From that settlement and his own preceding
action resulted his downfall, his disgrace with his wife's relatives, the
loss of his wife, the rage, surprise, and anguish of her sister, Martha,
and Martha's husband, Henry Sherwood, and the separation from his little
daughter, which was by far to him the hardest to bear. For Fisbee, in his
own way, and without consulting anybody--it never occurred to him, and he
was supposed often to forget that he had a wife and child--had informally
turned over to the university all the money which the banks had kindly
taken care of, and had given it to equip an expedition which never
expedited. A new president of the institution was installed; he talked to
the trustees; they met, and elected to become modern and practical and
technical; they abolished the course in fine arts, which abolished
Fisbee's connection with them, and they then employed his money to erect a
building for the mechanical engineering department. Fisbee was left with
nothing.
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