end his vacs wondering
how he could get the votes of Malthusian Mongols in Worcester without
losing the support of Church and State in Keble. Didn't you, Robert?"

"I shall draw a veil over the past," said Robert. "I became President,
anyhow."

"Be warned, Martin," his uncle went on. "Speak at college debates, if
it amuses you. But shun a public career. Talk all night to your
friends, for afterwards you won't get talk like it. You'll get shop
talk and small talk and dirty talk, but at Oxford you'll get the real
thing with luck."

Martin, remembering the tastes of Theo. K. Snutch, felt doubtful.

"Of course you'll find lots of nonsense there," John Berrisford added.
"Lectures, for instance. They're nothing but an excuse to keep the
dons from lounging: it certainly does give them an occupation for the
mornings. Just think of it! There they are, mouthing away term after
term. Either wisely cut----"

"Hear, hear!" from Robert.

"--or laboriously taken down, by conscientious youths with fountain
pens and patent note-books. I suppose the Rhodes scholars use
shorthand."

"Possibly," said Robert. "Certainly they have nasty little black books
to slip in their pockets like reporters."

"Anyhow the stuff could be got out of reputable books in half the time
with no manual labour of scribbling. Sometimes the man's lectures are
actually published in book form and yet he solemnly dictates them year
after year!"

"But sometimes," put in Cartmell, "a man has got something original to
say."

"Well," said Robert, "why doesn't he publish his notes at a price? I'm
quite willing to buy his knowledge, but I dislike having to waste time
and trouble in a stuffy lecture-room in order to get it."

"The whole thing is preposterous," his father concluded. "But the
system will last for fifty years or more. Just like the discipline.
So beautifully English, they drive everything underground, make it
twice as dangerous, and then pretend it doesn't exist. Instead of men
having open and honourable relations with women, they'll be slinking
about in back streets and snatching their kisses in taxicabs."

"Well," said Martin, "you set out to praise Oxford but you haven't made
it seem very attractive."

"Oh! you'll find it all right, when you come to it. If a man has got
to earn his own living it's about the only time when he can live a
reasonable life. You'll be able to say what you like, read what you
like, go to bed whe