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September-October, 194
the judge repeated slowly, letting the words roll critically off his tongue.
"What's the matter?" Otis asked angrily. "Don't you like it?"
"Like it?" the judge cackled. "I think it's a fine name. You pass."
From this peculiar start, Otis worked out an equally unusual method of teaching. The first day of school, he recommends four or five good books on the subject at hand. Once rid of these formalities, he spends the rest of the semester glibly expounding on marriage, baseball, sci' ence, trout fishing and anything else that comes to his mind. Few students take notes in any of his classes, but some of his classroom nuggets have turned up in such remote places as the editorial columns of the To\yo Times.
"Grinds" — students who scramble for high grades — are among Otis' pet peeves. "Bookworms usually never amount to much anyway," he says. "They miss all the fun in life." Ac' cordingly, he promises high grades to all of his students from the start. This procedure makes Otis' probably the most relaxing classroom in the world.
Among Doc Otis' successful nonbookworms are novelist David Davidson, author of The Steeper Cliff; Judge Irving Levy, of the New York State Supreme Court; Samuel Rosenman, one of Franklin D. Roosevelt's key wartime advisors; and Edward G. Robinson, the cinema toughie.
Robinson has been corresponding with Otis ever since one day in 1913, when the actor read Mark Antony's speech over the dead body of Julius Caesar in the professor's class.
"He stood there," Otis recalls.
"gripping the arm of his chair. H knuckles were white, and there wei tears streaming down his face, was plain that that boy was goin to be a great actor, or bust."
Oddly enough, Robinson did mak a hit as Caesar, but it was the rol of movie gangster. Little Caesar, tha touched off his skyrocket careei Tough as he is on the screen, Robir son has never managed to work u the nerve to address a group of sti: dents at his alma mater. "I'd b frightened to death," he once admitte« to Otis.
Another of Otis' predictions whicl Fate has whimsically distorted con cerns radio announcer Ben Grauer As a student, Grauer worked his wa^ through City College by buying am selling rare books. One day, Otis sole him an ancient volume for $50 Grauer came to class the next day beaming broadly.
"I just sold your book for $100," h( announced happily.
"Ben," said Otis, admiringly "you're going to make a great sales man."
These days, Grauer is a salesmai of sorts, vending everything from cig arettes to high-powered automobile over a national network.
But Otis' fame is not confined t( the 10,000 students who have beer hypnotized by his classroom conver sation over the past 44 years. Re cently, he received a copy of a nev book by Irwin Edman. On the insidt cover, the famous philospher had writ ten, "To William Bradley Otis — oi whose students I was jealous for man] years, because I was not one of them.'
At 70, Otis is reluctantly leavins