SEVERAL years ago, at a meeting of scholars, I heard one of them address a disconcerting question to his fellows. They were predominantly academic and in varying degree humanistic, and, in discussing grants and other aids to research, they had been comparing their situation unfavorably to that of scientists. The questioner went a good deal further. "How long," he asked, "will they put up with people like us?" For the purposes of this article I am interpreting the word "they" to mean, not the distributors of research funds, but the people of the country by whom persons like us have been tolerated and, in the last analysis, supported. Neither at the time nor thereafter was I greatly disturbed by the question on my own account. Being of a sanguine temperament, I expect society to put up with me a while longer, after doing so these many years. But I have been impelled to reflect on the scholar's life, as I have experienced and observed it for upwards of half a century of time and change, and to ponder over his prospects. As the present informal report will show, I have been engaged to a very considerable extent in reminiscence. This can be very boring to everybody else, but in point of time my life as a scholar has virtually coincided with that of the Virginia Quarterly Review as a journal, and some indulgence may perhaps be claimed for a contributor to its first number.