“[The professor] had managed for years to live two lives, both of them very intense.  He would willingly have cut down on his university work, would willingly have given his students chaff and sawdust–many instructors had nothing else to give them and got on very well–but his misfortune was that he loved youth–he was weak to it, it kindled him.  If there was one eager eye, one doubting, self-critical mind, one lively curiosity in a whole lecture-room full of commonplace boys and girls, he was its servant.  That ardour could command him.”

Willa Cather, The Professor’s House