medical inspection. Did I know anything of oil, of
rubber, of sugar, of substances generally, had I studied mineralogy or
geology, had I any ideas of industrial processes, of technical
chemistry, of rare minerals, of labor problems and the handling of alien
labor, of the economics of railway management or of camping out in dry,
thinly populated countries, or again could I maybe speak Spanish or
Italian or Russian? The little dons who career about Oxford afoot and
awheel, wearing old gowns and mortarboards, giggling over Spooner's
latest, and being tremendous "characters" in the intervals of concocting
the ruling-class mind, had turned my mind away from such matters
altogether. I had left that sort of thing to Germans and east-end Jews
and young men from the upper-grade board schools of Sheffield and
Birmingham. I was made to realize appalling wildernesses of
ignorance....

"You see," said old Pramley, "you don't seem to know anything whatever.
It's a deeficulty. It'll stand in your way a little now, though no
doubt you'd be quick at the uptake--after all the education they've
given ye.... But it stands in your way, if ye think of setting out to do
something large and effective, just immediately...."

Moreover it came out, I forget now how, that I hadn't clearly grasped
the difference between cumulative and non-cumulative preference
shares....

I remember too how I dined alone that evening in a mood between frantic
exasperation and utter abasement in the window of the Mediated
Universities Club, of which I was a junior member under the
undergraduate rule. And I lay awake all night in one of the austere club
bedrooms, saying to old Pramley a number of extremely able and
penetrating things that had unhappily not occurred to me during the
progress of our interview. I didn't go back to Burnmore for several
days. I had set my heart on achieving something, on returning with some
earnest of the great attack I was to make upon the separating great
world between myself and Mary. I am far enough off now from that angry
and passionate youngster to smile at the thought that my subjugation of
things in general and high finance in particular took at last the form
of proposing to go into the office of Bean, Medhurst, Stockton, and
Schnadhorst upon half commission terms. I was awaiting my father's reply
to this startling new suggestion when I got a telegram from Mary. "We
are going to Scotland unexpectedly. Come down and see me." I w