(see, split infinitive and all,
any "best seller" of a few years back).

'Does this seem at all incongruous to you? These so-called aristocrats
bring a son into existence, and, providing he's a decent-living,
rule-abiding chap, he is sheltered from the world and kept for the
enriching of their own hot-house of respectability. But--if one of
them upsets the ash-can and otherwise messes up the family escutcheon,
the father says, "You have disgraced our traditions. Get thee hence
into the cold, outside world. After this you belong to it."

'Damned generous of paterfamilias, isn't it? Only, as one of the cold,
outside world, I can't help wondering why, if Milord is going to keep
his good apples for himself, we should have to accept the rotten ones.

'Concerning Cambridge--I spent a weekend there recently with Doug
Watson of Boston, who is taking Engineering. Cambridge is quite a
little community, as separate from the rest of England as the Channel
Islands. On the Saturday evening I was there Watson took a punt, and
with considerable dexterity piloted me along the Cam, with its green
velvet banks and overhanging trees. The river is an exquisite thing,
and there was a sensuous drowsiness in the beauty of the hour before
dark.

'The lawns from the backs of the colleges slope down to the river, and
as we passed along we noticed group after group of students drinking
coffee made in percolators in their possession. There was something
almost pastoral in the sight of those young Britishers in such complete
repose. Perhaps I should have enjoyed it all without question if it
had not been that, a week before, I had visited a poor little
Nonconformist preacher who labours on an empty stomach to a little
congregation in a chain-making district. Edge, the sights I saw there
were not good for any man to see and remain quiet. Women work at the
fires when pregnant, and fuddle themselves with beer at night; the men
are a shiftless lot, who spend their lives hand-in-hand with poverty
and think only of beer, "baccy," and loafing. You know I'm no
prohibitionist, but I hate to see beer the goal of men's ambitions. In
one school there was a class with forty "backward" children. That's
the kinder word, Edge, but the real one is "imbecile." Think of
it--forty human destinies that must be lived out to a finish! They
tell me that conditions are improving there. I hope so, in Heaven's
name.

'It was that visit I had in mind w