that clemming for education. Why! I longed all through one winter
to read a bit of Darwin. I must know about this Darwin if I die for
it, I said. And I could no' get the book."

Hatherleigh made an enthusiastic noise and drank beer at him with
round eyes over the mug.

"Well, anyhow I wasted no time on Greek and Latin," said Chris
Robinson. "And one learns to go straight at a thing without
splitting straws. One gets hold of the Elementals."

(Well, did they? That was the gist of my perplexity.)

"One doesn't quibble," he said, returning to his rankling memory of
Denson, "while men decay and starve."

"But suppose," I said, suddenly dropping into opposition, "the
alternative is to risk a worse disaster--or do something patently
futile."

"I don't follow that," said Chris Robinson. "We don't propose
anything futile, so far as I can see."


6


The prevailing force in my undergraduate days was not Socialism but
Kiplingism. Our set was quite exceptional in its socialistic
professions. And we were all, you must understand, very distinctly