"LIFE!" said Esmeer. "And so in a way are we," he added, and made a
thoughtful silence for a time.

"I say," began Carter, who was doing the Natural Science Tripos,
"what is the adult form of the Pinky Dinky?"

But there we were checked by our ignorance of the world.

"What is the adult form of any of us?" asked Benton, voicing the
thought that had arrested our flow.



3


I do not remember that we ever lifted our criticism to the dons and
the organisation of the University. I think we took them for
granted. When I look back at my youth I am always astonished by the
multitude of things that we took for granted. It seemed to us that
Cambridge was in the order of things, for all the world like having
eyebrows or a vermiform appendix. Now with the larger scepticism of
middle age I can entertain very fundamental doubts about these old
universities. Indeed I had a scheme--

I do not see what harm I can do now by laying bare the purpose of
the political combinations I was trying to effect.

My educational scheme was indeed the starting-point of all the big