oks, for the most part open and face
downward; deeper darknesses were supplied by a discarded gown and
our caps, all conscientiously battered, Hatherleigh's flopped like an
elephant's ear and inserted quill pens supported the corners of mine;
the highlights of the picture came chiefly as reflections from his
chequered blue mugs full of audit ale. We sat on oak chairs, except the
four or five who crowded on a capacious settle, we drank a lot of beer
and were often fuddled, and occasionally quite drunk, and we all smoked
reckless-looking pipes,--there was a transient fashion among us for corn
cobs for which Mark Twain, I think, was responsible. Our little excesses
with liquor were due far more to conscience than appetite, indicated
chiefly a resolve to break away from restraints that we suspected were
keeping us off the instructive knife-edges of life. Hatherleigh was a
good Englishman of the premature type with a red face, a lot of hair, a
deep voice and an explosive plunging manner, and it was he who said one
evening--Heaven knows how we got to it--"Look here, you know, it's all
Rot, this Shutting Up about Women. We OUGHT to talk about them. What are
we going to do about them? It's got to come. We're all festering inside
about it. Let's out with it. There's too much Decency altogether about
this Infernal University!"

We rose to his challenge a little awkwardly and our first talk
was clumsy, there were flushed faces and red ears, and I remember
Hatherleigh broke out into a monologue on decency. "Modesty and
Decency," said Hatherleigh, "are Oriental vices. The Jews brought them
to Europe. They're Semitic, just like our monasticism here and the
seclusion of women and mutilating the dead on a battlefield. And all
that sort of thing."

Hatherleigh's mind progressed by huge leaps, leaps that were usually
wildly inaccurate, and for a time we engaged hotly upon the topic of
those alleged mutilations and the Semitic responsibility for decency.
Hatherleigh tried hard to saddle the Semitic race with the less elegant
war customs of the Soudan and the northwest frontier of India, and
quoted Doughty, at that time a little-known author, and Cunninghame
Graham to show that the Arab was worse than a county-town spinster in
his regard for respectability. But his case was too preposterous, and
Esmeer, with his shrill penetrating voice and his way of pointing with
all four long fingers flat together, carried the point against him. He
qu