More in Sorrow Than in Anger

Abstract

Within William Lloyd Prosser there dwelled two persons. First there was a character endowed with a fantastic capacity to absorb the richness of the world around him, a prodigious memory to retain in photographic detail all that he took in, an organizational genius to put it together in meaningful ways and a power of expression that enabled him to pass his world along to others with new fullness and fascination. All these talents were driven in perpetual high gear by some kind of galvanic magic that nobody fully understood. This was Prosser the legendary character who could absorb the content of a written page almost as fast as he could turn it over; who when scarcely a teenager, would graze in the meadows of history and literature munching contentedly upon such pasturage as Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and other fare intended only for adult consumption. The other dweller within the person of Prosser was none other than a quite little boy, with all the caprices that little boys are made of. There was in Bill always a sense of high excitement and readiness for adventure. When you encountered him, even after a lengthy separation, there were no greetings, no preliminary inquiries. Instead would come Hi! Peter Lorre is here at the hotel. How can we use him to pull off some scary business for the benefit of Jim Harno? Poor Dean Albert Harno (affectionately known to Bill as Jim) was the chief target of most of Bill's practical jokes in the old days. When Harno arrived at his office on the morning of his birthday, he knew immediately who was responsible for the enormous iced octopus that had arrived by express and was waiting to greet him. How this perpetual goading of Harno came about I shall now probably never know. There was a deep friendship between the two and an exchange of pranks was always in order, with Prosser usually getting the best of it. If any one feature of Bill's makeup was more prominent than any other, I suppose it was his yearning to put on a performance. He was born an actor and once confided to me that he always had wanted to go on the stage. I am sure that this is why he was a lively and interesting teacher and garnered such a fabulous assortment of yarns and after-dinner stories. It was this same urge to act that brought about the evening sessions at which Bill fascinated students and their ladies