Ireland. I
don't care about Greece and all those rotten little holes in the Aegean
... that's dead and done with ... but I do care about Ireland which
isn't dead and done with!"

It was then that Mr. Quinn found consolation. "Well, anyway, you've
learned to love Ireland," he said. "Trinity's done that much for you!"

"Trinity hasn't done it for me," Henry answered, "I did it for myself."

Lying back in his seat, waiting for the train to steam out of the
station on its journey to Belfast, Henry remembered that conversation
with his father, and his mind speculated freely on his attitude towards
Trinity. "I don't care," he said, "if I never put my foot inside the
gates again!"

Something that Patrick Galway said to him once, when he and John Marsh
were talking of Trinity, came back to his memory. "The College is living
on Oliver Goldsmith and Edmund Burke," Galway said, and added, "It's
like a maiden lady in a suburb giving herself airs because her
great-grandfather knew somebody who was great. It hasn't produced a man
who's done anything for Ireland, except harm, not in the last hundred
years anyhow. Lawyers and parsons and officials, that's the best Trinity
can do! If you think of the Irishmen who've done anything fine for
Ireland, you'll find that, when they came from universities at all, they
came from Oxford or Cambridge, anywhere on God's earth but Trinity.
Horace Plunkett was at Oxford...."

"Eton, too!" Marsh had interjected.

"Yes, Eton!" Galway went on. "Think of it! An Irish patriot coming from
Eton where you'd think only Irish oppressors would come from! If
Plunkett had been educated in an Irish school and sent to Trinity, do
you think he'd have done anything decent for Ireland?"

"Yes," Henry had replied promptly. "He's that kind of man!"

"No, he wouldn't," Galway retorted. "They'd have educated the decency
out of him, and he'd have been a ... a sort of Lord Ashtown!"

But Henry would have none of that. He would not believe that a man's
nature can be altered by pedagogues.

"Horace Plunkett would have been a good Irishman if he'd been born and
reared and educated in an Orange Lodge," he said.

"I'm not talking about natures," Galway replied. "I'm talking about
beliefs. They'd have told him it was no good trying to build up an Irish
nation...."

"He wouldn't have believed them," Henry retorted. "Damn it, Galway, do
you think a man like Plunkett would let a lot of fiddling schoolmasters
knock him