There is a story that a university in Scotland once wished to honor a scholar who had done some significant inquiry into the life and work of one of its own most illustrious former scholars, the 16th century Scottish reformer, John Knox. The tradition in that and several other universities was that, if possible, a cap belonging to the subject of the study - in this case John Knox - would be given to the person being honored, if such a cap could be found. In that way the honoree would have something personal, imbued at least in thought, by a sense of the man who had once worn it. But the only cap of John Knox that anyone knew about had already been presented to someone else years before. However the university did possess a pair of trousers that had once belonged to Knox, so they had a cap …