That was their "ideal" game. As I have said, remembering that
afternoon, I can sympathise with the University professor mourning
the absence of University ideals in youth. Possibly at six my own
ideal game may have been "Mothers."  Looking back from the pile of
birthdays upon which I now stand, it occurs to me that very probably
it was. But from the perspective of twelve, the reflection that
there were beings in the world who could find recreation in such
fooling saddened me.

   Eight years later, his father not being able to afford the time, I
conducted Master "Waterworks," now a healthy, uninteresting, gawky
lad, to a school in Switzerland. It was my first Continental trip.
I should have enjoyed it better had he not been with me. He thought
Paris a "beastly hole."  He did not share my admiration for the
Frenchwoman; he even thought her badly dressed.

   "Why she's so tied up, she can't walk straight," was the only
impression she left upon him.

   We changed the subject; it irritated me to hear him talk. The
beautiful Juno-like creatures we came across further on in Germany,
he said were too fat. He wanted to see them run. I found him
utterly soulless.

   To expect a boy to love learning and culture is like expecting him to
prefer old vintage claret to gooseberry wine. Culture for the
majority is an acquired taste. Speaking personally, I am entirely in
agreement with the University professor. I find knowledge, prompting
to observation and leading to reflection, the most satisfactory
luggage with which a traveller through life can provide himself. I
would that I had more of it. To be able to enjoy a picture is of
more advantage than to be able to buy it.

   All that the University professor can urge in favour of idealism I am
prepared to endorse. But then I am—let us say, thirty-nine. At
fourteen my candid opinion was that he was talking "rot."  I looked
at the old gentleman himself—a narrow-chested, spectacled old
gentleman, who lived up a by street. He did not seem to have much
fun of any sort. It was not my ideal. He told me things had been
written in a language called Greek that I should enjoy reading, but I

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