Word: pifex
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Some of his classmates knew enough Latin to translate him into "Opifex," a Smith. Reduced to "'Pifex," this was his appelation henceforth. His college days must have prefigured the rest of his strange life. After he was graduated his Smiths made him a fat allowance, but he was a queer lad, he was. He wore out the patience of his patrons. They cast him off. He became a sort of tramp. He tried his fortune in mining camps, in New York buoket shops, in the Chicago grain market. He even haunted, as his chaste Cambridge biographer puts it, "sections...
...Smith died in 1891 and left him her husband's entire fortune. The blood relations had a fit. The contest over the will lasted ten years. 'Pifex, now become a sour and suspicious recluse, won. He kept his window shades down. Cats were the only guests at his table. Lawyers were his only acquaintances. In 1892 he was writing to the class secretary of his "old love for our Alma Mater." He left the bulk of his estate for the erection of those three Smith Halls, James Smith, Percy Smith and George Smith Halls, where the freshmen are gathered...
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