Summary
Ebenezer Goodly, pedagogue of sinew and skeleton, keeps a prim Victorian academy fragrant with lilac water and repressed heartbeats; into this corseted sanctuary hurtles Jones—salesman of Scripture and poker decks—his suitcase rattling with contraband desire. One forged love-letter from a feigned Bishop, one stolen evening at an illegal prize-fight, and a deluge of policemen later, Jones emerges coat-tail-less, smeared with stable straw, masquerading as the long-lost Bishop of Timbuctoo while the real prelate sprints across rooftops in a blanket pursued by white-coated alienists. Add Cissy Vandergould—Gilded-Age heiress with a laugh like champagne uncorked—and the equation combusts: midnight pillow-fights become betrothals, anatomical lectures turn into elopements, and the chaste dormitory bathtub becomes a baptismal font for anarchic matrimony.
Synopsis
Ebenezer Goodly, Professor of Anatomy, conducts an academy for young ladies. He and his wife, two daughters, and sister-in-law are looking forward to a long-promised visit from the Professor's brother, the Bishop of Timbuctoo. It is 30 years since the Professor has seen his brother, and none of the family has met him. Secretly, however, the Bishop has been making love, by letter, to Alvina, the Professor's thin, homely sister-in-law. Cissy Vandergould, an heiress, comes as a pupil to the academy;l on the train she encountered Jones, a wide-awake traveling salesman who deals in Bibles and playing cards, and they were immediately and mutually attracted. The Professor's younger daughter Marjorie is engaged to Dick Heatherly, who is supposed to be a model young man. When leaving the Professor's house, however, he drops a card of admission to a prize fight. The professor finds it and accuses him. After a heated argument, Dick persuades the Professor, "in the interest of science," to accompany him. During the fight, the police make a raid. Dick and the Professor escape by crawling over a stable and down a waterspout. They are followed by Jones, the travelling salesman, who was also at the prize fight. Jones gets badly mauled by the police and loses his coattails in the scrimmage, but by the use of "uppercuts" gets free. He finds refuge in the professor's academy and frightens Cissy Vandergould by disturbing her in her bath and interrupts a strenuous pillow fight in the young ladies' dormitory. The Professor and Dick try to eject him, but he demands their protection under threat of exposing them to the police. A new suit of clothes has arrived for the expected Bishop. Jones dons the suit and is seized upon by Alvina and the rest of the family as the "dear Bishop." He forces the Professor to appoint him a teacher in the academy and makes violent love to the heiress, Cissy. The real Bishop arrives and they hustle him up to a bedroom and undress him and take away his clothes and lock him in the room. A lunatic wrapped in a blanket imagining he is an Indian escapes from a neighboring sanitarium. The Bishop makes his escape from the window also wrapped in a blanket and is seen by the officials from the sanitarium and chased all over the neighborhood. Jones sees that things are getting too hot, so he persuades Cissy to elope with him. They start for the railway station and are pursued by the lunatic. They elude him and reach a clergyman, who ties the conjugal knot. The Bishop explains matters at the sanitarium and is restored to the academy and is glad to be welcomed to the protection of Alvina's skinny arms.
