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man?" the dour'faced schoolmarm asked, holding out her hand.
Young Otis smiled wanly and shook his head.
"Let me have it," the teacher demanded, a hint of violence in her voice.
The boy gulped and placed the squirming serpent in her hand.
Thirty years later, the unfortunate woman was rc'introduced to Otis at a professional gathering. Recognizing him, she began to shriek hysterically and bolted from the room.
Hearing of the incident, one of Otis' students — who later became a famous reptile curator— playfully decided to bring a ten-foot snake to school in a gunny sack and release it under the professor's nose. He wanted to be sure, the student said, that Otis would never forget him.
Somehow, Otis has managed not to forget a staggering number of his ex-students — without the benefit of snakes. During the war, he kept up a steady stream of correspondence with more than 200 of them, and his cubbyhole office at the college is a veritable mecca for returning alumni, ranging from street cleaners to supreme court judges.
Not long ago, the professor received an envelope with two $6 tickets to the hit musical, Finian's Kninhow. Tucked in with the tickets was a note from E. Y. Harburg, composer of the play.
"The electric spark which ignited me in your classroom," Harburg wrote, "has a direct connection with Finiaris Kainhow and how it came to be written. Do you remem' ber reading a parody of mine in class
September-October, 1949
one day? From then on, I knew what I was going to do. Take these tickets, and come and see your handiwork."
Otis is one of those rare teachers? who does some of his best work out' i side of the classroom. In 1923, young sophomore named Borrah Minnevitch came to him. The boy was almost in tears. His father had just died, and he was forced to leave college to look for work. But what kind of work could an untrained youngster get?
"What do you like to do best, Borrah?" Otis asked.
"Play the mouth organ," the boy answered glumly. "But who'd pay me to do that?"
"They'd pay you," Otis answered, "if you could play the best mouth organ in the world. They might even ask you to perform at the Metro' politan Opera House!"
Carried away by his desire to be helpful, Otis later had misgivings about his enthusiasm. But three years afterward, Minnevitch came back to City College in a Rolls-Royce.
"You were right. Doc," he said happily. "I've just finished a tour of Europe, and next month, I'm going to play at the Metropolitan Opera House."
But, the professor is no sweet' tongued Pollyana. From time to time, he has engaged in sizzling feuds which have distressed some of his stuffier colleagues and delighted his admiring students. Perhaps the most colorful of these has been his five-year ven' detta with Lionel Trilling, a literary critic.
In 1943, TriUing published a destructive review of Otis' Survey'HiS'