nd then, seeing he was in for it, said:

"Never mind fighting. Try something else; cricket, for instance.
The players generally beat the gentlemen, don't they?"

"Yes; but they are professionals."

"Well, and we don't often get a university crew which can beat
the watermen?"

"Professionals again."

"I believe the markers are the best tennis-players, ain't they?"
persevered the Captain; "and I generally find keepers and
huntsmen shooting and riding better than their master's, don't
you?"

"But that's not fair. All the cases you put are those of men who
have nothing else to do, who live by the things gentlemen only
take up for pleasure."

"I only say that the cads, as you call them, manage, somehow or
another, to do them best," said the Captain.

"How about the army and navy? The officers always lead."

"Well, there they're all professionals, at any rate," said the
Captain. "I admit that the officers lead; but the men follow
pretty close. And in a forlorn hope there are fifty men to one
officer, after all."

"But they must be led. The men will never go without an officer
to lead."

"It's the officers' business to lead, I know; and they do it. But
you won't find the best judges talking as if the men wanted much
leading. Read Napier: the finest story in his book is of the
sergeant who gave his life for his boy officer's--your namesake,
Brown--at the Coa."

"Well, I never thought to hear you crying down gentlemen."

"I'm not crying down gentlemen," said the Captain. "I only say
that a gentleman's flesh and blood, and brains, are just the
same, and no better than another man's. He has all the chances on
his side in the way of training, and pretty near all the prizes;
so it would be hard if he didn't do most things better than poor
men. But give them the chance of training, and they will tread on
his heels soon enough. That's all I say."

That was all, certainly, that the Captain said, and then relapsed
into his usual good-tempered monosyllabic state; from which all
the eager talk of the men, who took up the cudgels naturally
enough for their own class, and talked themselves before the wine
broke up into a renewed consciousness of their natural
superiority, failed again to rouse him.

This was, in fact, the Captain's weak point, if he had one. He
had strong beliefs himself; one of the strongest of which was,
that nobody could be taught anything except by his own
experience; so he never, or very rarely,