spoke. They converged to it from looks crossing or catching profiles,
or from tones, from a motion of hand, from a chance word. Insomuch that
the third person present was kept unobservant only by her studious and
humble speculations on the young schoolmaster's grand project to bring
the nationalities together, and teach Old England to the Continent--the
Continent to Old England: our healthy games, our scorn of the lie,
manliness; their intellectual valour, diligence, considerate manners.

'Just to name a few of the things for interchange,' said Weyburn. 'As to
method, we shall be their disciples. But I look forward to our fellows
getting the lead. No hurry. Why will they? you ask in petto. Well,
they 're emulous, and they take a thrashing kindly. That 's the way to
learn a lesson. I 've seen our fellows beaten and beaten--never the
courage beaten out of them. In the end, they won and kept the field.
They have a lot to learn--principally not to be afraid of ideas. They
lose heaps of time before they can feel at home with ideas. They call
themselves practical for having an addiction to the palpable. It is a
pretty wreath they clap on their deficiencies. Practical dogs are for
bones, horses for corn. I want the practical Englishman to settle his
muzzle in a nosebag of ideas. When he has once got hold of them, he
makes good stuff of them. On the Continent ideas have wings and pay
visits. Here, they're stay-at-home. Then I want our fellows to have the
habit of speaking from the chest. They shall return to England with the
whoop of the mountains in them and ready to jump out. They shall have
an Achillean roar; and they shall sing by second nature. Don't fear:
they'll give double for anything they take. I've known Italians, to whom
an Englishman's honesty of mind and dealing was one of the dreams of a
better humanity they had put in a box. Frenchmen, too, who, when they
came to know us, were astonished at their epithet of perfide, and loved
us.'