His hair when he was a young man was red, but after he
had taken his degree he had a brain fever which caused him to have his
head shaved; when he reappeared, he did so wearing a wig, and one which
was a good deal further off red than his own hair had been. He not only
had never discarded his wig, but year by year it had edged itself a
little more and a little more off red, till by the time he was forty,
there was not a trace of red remaining, and his wig was brown.
When Dr Skinner was a very young man, hardly more than five-and-twenty,
the head-mastership of Roughborough Grammar School had fallen vacant, and
he had been unhesitatingly appointed. The result justified the
selection. Dr Skinner's pupils distinguished themselves at whichever
University they went to. He moulded their minds after the model of his
own, and stamped an impression upon them which was indelible in after-
life; whatever else a Roughborough man might be, he was sure to make
everyone feel that he was a God-fearing earnest Christian and a Liberal,
if not a Radical, in politics. Some boys, of course, were incapable of
appreciating the beauty and loftiness of Dr Skinner's nature.
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