cidity in the regions of accurate knowledge. Sometimes, in talking
to his friend, Hugh became painfully aware of the weakness of his own
slouching, pleasure-loving mind. It seemed to him that, in the
intellectual region, he was like a dusty and ragged tramp, permeated on
sunshiny days with a sort of weak, unsystematic contentment, dawdling
by hedgerow-ends and fountain-heads, lying in a vacant muse in grassy
dingles, and sleeping by stealth in the fragrant shadow of hayricks;
while his friend seemed to him to be a brisk gentleman in a furred
coat, flashing along the roads in a motor-car, full of useful activity
and pleasant business. His friend's idea of education was of a strict
and severe mental discipline; he did not over-estimate the value of
knowledge, but regarded facts and dates rather as a skilled workman
regards his bright and well-arranged tools. What he did above all
things value was a keen, acute, clear, penetrating mind, which arrayed
almost unconsciously the elements of a problem, and hastened unerringly
to a conclusion. The only point in which Hugh rated his own capacity
higher, was in a certain relish for literary effect. His friend was a
great reader, but Hugh felt that he himself possessed a power of
enjoyment, an appreciation of colour and melody, a thrilled delight in
what was artistically excellent, of which his friend seemed to have
little inkling.

His friend could classify authors, and could give off-hand a brilliant
and well-sustained judgment on their place in literary development,
which fairly astonished Hugh. But the difference seemed to be that his
friend had mastered books with a sort of gymnastic agility, and that
his mind had reached an astonishing degree of technical perfection
thereby; but Hugh felt that to himself books had been a species of
food, and that his heart and spirit had gained some intensity from
them, some secret nourishment, which his friend had to a certain extent
missed.

Hugh had been so stirred on several occasions by a sense of shame at
realising the impotence and bareness of his own mind, that he laid down
an ambitious scheme of self-improvement, and attacked history with a
zealous desire for his own mental reform. But he soon discovered that
it was useless. Such an effort might have been made earlier in life,
before habits had been formed of desultory enjoyment, but it was in
vain now. He realised that accurate knowledge simply fell through his
mind like