o, we want French, jolly few cribs to be got of
Daudet that are any use to the Lower Fifth ... Maths, that's the stuff
... makes them think.... Riders ... get them out your own way--not
Vergil's way or Socrates' way--your own way--originality...."

In this strain he talked for a quarter of an hour, and held the audience
spellbound. He had really interested them. Here was something new,
something worth listening to. He was received with a roar of clapping.

After his speech everything else fell flat. Christy made one or two
super-subtle remarks which no one understood. There was nothing left for
Pothering to say; the motion was then put before the House and the
debate developed into a farce. Idiot after idiot got up and made some
infantile qualification of an earlier statement--all of them talked off
the point. So much so, in fact, that Turner was beginning a tale of a
fight he had had with a coster down Cheap Street when Christy called him
to order.

Gordon at once rose in protest.

"Gentlemen, I address the Chair. It is preposterous that Mr Turner
should have been refused a hearing. We may have lost what would perhaps
have thrown new light on the subject. Doubtless he had carefully
selected this particular anecdote out of a life, alas, too full of
excitement" (a roar greeted this, Christy had beaten Turner that very
morning for eating chocolates in German), "with the express view of
pointing out the superiority of the classics. Doubtless the rough in
question, not knowing the custom in Homeric contests, had failed to
propitiate the gods, while he, the narrator, had rushed into Back Lane
behind Mother Beehive's charming old-world residence, and having offered
a prayer to Mars, waited for his burly antagonist in the darkness, and
as the vile man, clearly one of St Paul's 'god haters'" (that time the
Sixth were reading the "Romans") "thundered by, he smote him with a
stone above the eye, and left him discomfited and, like OEdipus, well
nigh blind. Here we see----"

But the meeting never found out what they really saw. Gordon was called
to order, and sat down amid a tumult of applause. One or two more
speakers brought fresh evidence to bear on the subject; and then there
was the division. The moderns won by a huge majority. As the rabble
passed into the passage Gordon heard Ferrers say to Christy in his most
patronising manner:

"Rather wiped the ground with you, didn't we?... Well, never mind, you
stood no earthly.