“The Examination Room you knew has gone,” said I. “If you are looking for it, I fear you must go to Teperman’s wrecking yard, for whatever remains of it is there.”

“But is this not an Examination Room?” said the Ghost. I nodded. “Then I beg you, by all that is merciful, to examine me,” he cried, and to my embarrassed astonishment, threw himself at my feet.

“Examine you for what?” I said.

“For my Ph.D.”, wailed the Ghost, and the eerie, agonized tone in which it uttered those commonplace letters made me, for the first time, afraid. “I must have it. I knew no rest when I was in the world of men, because I was seeking it; I know no rest now, as I linger on the threshold of another life, because I lack it. I shall never be at peace without it.”

I have often heard it said that the Ph.D. is a vastly overvalued degree, but I had not previously thought that it might stand between a man and his eternal rest. I was becoming as agitated as the Ghost.

“My good creature,” said I, rather emotionally, “if I can be of any assistance—”

“You can,” cried the Ghost, clawing at the knees of my trousers with its transparent hands; “examine me, I beg of you. Examine me now and set me free. I’m quite ready.”

“But, just a moment,” said I; “the papers—the copies of your thesis—”

“All ready,” said the Ghost, in triumph. And, though I swear that they were not there before, I now saw that all the circle of tables in the Round Room was piled high with those dismal, unappetizing volumes—great wads of typewritten octavo paper—which are Ph.D. theses.

“Be reasonable,” said I. “I don’t suppose for a minute I can examine you. What is your field?”

“What’s yours?” said the Ghost, and if a Ghost can speak cunningly, that is exactly what this one did now.

“English literature,” I said; “more precisely, the drama of the nineteenth century, with special emphasis on the popular drama of the transpontine London theatres between 1800 and 1850.”

Most people find that discouraging, and change the subject. But the Ghost positively frisked to one of the heaps, drew out an especially thick thesis, and handed it to me.

“Shall I sit here?” he asked, pointing to the red chair, which, as you know, has a place of special prominence in that room.

“By no means,” said I, shocked by such an idea.

“Oh, I had so hoped I might,” said the Ghost.

“My dear fellow, you have been listening to University gossip,” said I. “There are people who pretend that we put the examinee in that chair and sit around the room in a ring, baiting him till he bursts into tears. It is the sort of legend in which scientists and other mythomaniacs take delight. No, no; if you will go away for a few hours—say until tomorrow at ten o’clock—I shall have the room set up for an examination. You shall have a soft chair, cheek by jowl with your examiners, with lots of cigarettes, unlimited water to drink, a fan, and a trained nurse in attendance to take you to the Examinees’ W.C. and bring you back again, should the need occur. We are very well aware here that Ph.D. candidates are delicate creatures, subject to unaccountable metaphysical ills—”

The Ghost broke in, impatiently. “Rubbish,” he said; “I’m quite ready. Let’s get to work. You sit in the red chair. I’m perfectly happy to stand. I think I’m pretty well prepared”—and as he said this I swear that something like a leer passed over the shadow that should have been a face—”and I’m ready as soon as you are.”

There was nothing for it. The Ghost had taken command. I sat down in the red chair—my chair—and opened the thesis. Prolegomena to the Study of the Christ Symbol in the Plays of Thomas Egerton Wilks, I read, and my heart, which had been sinking for the last few moments now plunged so suddenly that I almost lost consciousness. I have heard of Wilks—it is my job to have heard of him—but of his fifty-odd melodramas, farces and burlesque extravaganzas I have not read a line. However, I have my modest store of professor-craft. I opened the thesis, riffled through the pages, hummed and hawed a little, made a small mark in the margin of one page, and said—”Well, suppose for a beginning, you give me a general outline of your argument.”

He did.

Forty-five minutes later, when I could get a word in, I asked him just where he thought the Christ symbol made its first appearance in My Wife’s Dentist, or The Balcony Beau which is one of Wilks’ dreary farces.

He told me.

Before he had finished he had also given me more knowledge than I really wanted about the Christ symbol in Woman’s Love or Kate Wynsley the Cottage Girl, Raffaelle the Reprobate, or the Secret Mission and the Signet Ring, The Ruby Ring, or The Murder at Sadlers Wells, and another farce named, more simply, Bamboozling.

By this time I felt that I had been sufficiently bamboozled myself, so I asked him to retire, while the examination board—me, me, and only me, as the old song puts it—considered his case. When I was alone I sought to calm myself with a drink of water, and after a decent interval I called him back.

‘There are a few minor errors in this thesis which you will undoubtedly notice during a calm re-reading, and a certain opaqueness of style which might profitably be amended. I am surprised that you have made so little use of the great Variorum Edition of Wilks published by Professors Fawcett and Pale, of the University of Bitter End, Idaho. Nevertheless I find it to be a piece of research of real, if limited value, which, if published, might be—yes, I shall go so far as to say, will be—seminal in the field of nineteenth century drama studies,” said I. “I congratulate you, and it will be a pleasure to recommend that you receive your degree.”

I don’t know what I expected then. Perhaps I hoped that he would disappear, with a seraphic smile. True enough, there was an atmosphere as of a smile, but it was the smile of a giant refreshed. “Good,” he said; “now we can get on to my other subjects.”

“Do you mean to say that nineteenth century drama isn’t your real subject?” I cried, and when I say ‘I cried,’ I really mean it; my voice came out in a loud, horrified croak.

“Sir,” said he; “it is so long ago since my unfortunate experience at my first examination that I have utterly forgotten what my subject was. But I have had time since then to prepare myself for any eventuality. I have written theses on everything. Shall we go on now to History?”

I was too astonished, and horrified, and by this time afraid, to say anything. We went on to History.

My knowledge of History is that of a layman. Academically, there is nothing worse, of course, that can be said. But professor-craft did not wholly desert me. The first principle, when you don’t know anything about the subject of a thesis, is to let the candidate talk, nodding now and then with an ambiguous smile. He thinks you know, and are counting his mistakes, and it unnerves him. The Ghost was an excellent examinee; that is to say, he fell for it, and I think I shook his confidence once with a little laugh, when he was talking about Canada’s encouragement of the arts under the premiership of W. L. Mackenzie King. But finally the two hours was up, and I graciously gave him his Ph.D. in History.

Next came classics. His thesis was on The Concept of Pure Existence in Plotinus. You don’t want to hear about it, but I must pause long enough to say that I scored rather heavily by my application of the second principle of conducting an oral, which is to pretend ignorance, and ask for explanations of very simple points. Of course your ignorance is real, but the examinee thinks you are being subtle, and that he is making an ass of himself, and this rattles him.

And so, laboriously, we toiled through the Liberal Arts, and some of the Arts which are not so liberal. I examined him in Computer Science, and Astronomy, and Mediaeval Studies, and I rather enjoyed examining him in Fine Art. One of my best examinations was in Mathematics, though personally my knowledge stops short at the twelve-times table.