a Lisa, made up his mind that she would not become his
outlook thirty years hence. Some stern old admiral with his hand on the
terrestrial globe and a naval engagement in the background would better
suit his mantelpiece.

"I wonder what I shall be like at fifty," he sighed.

"It depends what you do in between nineteen and fifty," said Avery. "You
can't possibly settle down at the Albany as soon as you leave the
Varsity. You'll have to do something."

"What, for example?" Michael asked.

"Oh, write perhaps."

"Write!" Michael scoffed. "Why, when I can read all these"--he pointed
to his bookshelves--"and all the dozens and dozens more I intend to buy,
what a fool I should be to waste my time in writing."

"Well, I intend to write," said Avery. "In fact, I don't mind telling
you I intend to start a paper as soon as I can."

Michael laughed.

"And you'll contribute," Avery went on eagerly.

"How much?"

"I'm talking about articles. I shall call my paper--well, I haven't
thought about the title--but I shall get a good one. It won't be like
the papers of the nineties. It will be more serious. It will deal with
art, of course, and literature, and politics, but it won't be decadent.
It will try to reflect contemporary undergraduate thought. I think it
might be called The Oxford Looking-Glass."

"Yes, I expect it will be a looking-glass production," said Michael. "I
should call it The World Turned Upside Down."

"I'm perfectly serious about this paper," said Avery reproachfully.

"And I'm taking you very seriously," said Michael. "That's why I won't
write a line. Are you going to have illustrations?"

"We might have one drawing. I'm not quite sure how much it costs to
reproduce a drawing. But it would be fun to publish some rather advanced
stuff."

"Well, as long as you don't publish drawings that look as if the
compositor had suddenly got angry with the page and thrown asterisks at
it, and as long as----"

"Oh, shut up," interrupted the dreaming editor, "and don't fall into
that tiresome undergraduate cynicism. It's so young."

"But I am young," Michael pointed out with careful gravity. "So are you.
And, Maurice, really you know for me my own ambitions are best. I've got
a great sense of responsibility, and if I were to start going through
life trying to do things, I should worry myself all the time. The only
chance for me is to find a sort of negative attitude to life like
Prescott. You'll do lots of thin