The visiting Professor taught classes in an accent his students joked about; they asked for repetitions. Two months before the Frasers’ planned return to Glasgow, the whole family began packing. Overpreparing, Fraser brogues thickened to butterscotch density. The day before departure arrived, the Professor’s wife—pretty, plump—hurried to Marshall Field’s, buying gifts for Scottish relatives, tablecloths and matching napkins. Laden with goods, happy, rushing, she was one block from the store when a streetcar jumped its tracks. It came at her. It was striking her. It had pinned her underneath it. Already, her pelvis had been crushed like some Sèvres teacup trod upon by boots. Kind treatment she received on the street was later attributed to eleven scattered bundles in Field’s gift-wrapping. Those, if not her dreadful screams, had marked her as a lady. Four doctors, overpaid, the best by all accounts, told Donald Fraser, “Scotland? Any travel would be fatal. She would die on the train to New York.” The accident rendered the daughter of Lord Kilkairn an invalid for life. She could not walk, would have to be carried, forever moaning, from bed to bed.

And so the Professor’s employment ended. (The teacher he’d traded places with came home wearing a touristic tartan vest, and amicably evicted the clan.) Fraser’s own university was an ocean away, unable to continue his salary or tenure. Donald Fraser was forced to move his brood to ever-more-modest lodgings. Educated by live-in tutors at Sunnyside, the man was skilled in Greek and Latin. To quote all the poetry he had by heart would take him three days. He could draw serviceably, could sing in a decent tenor the popular Italian arias; his bagpipe collection was considered somewhat comprehensive. He’d known Rossetti, had entertained Ruskin. He had shared a childhood mathematics coach with that other gifted, charming nomad susceptible to boys’ literature: Robert Louis Stevenson. But not one of Fraser’s skills/languages/friendships warranted five dollars of ready Chicago cash.

Stranded here, Professor Fraser sought a permanent job at the university, but he’d been a guest, a novelty. So he ran a newspaper ad, the cheapest four-word minimum: “Can Tutor, Most Subjects.”