osal, and you tell us you have been through them all in
your University! All I can say is, you had better go back to it, and
stay there."

"The Bursar," said the Tutor, "will not be best pleased to see me again.
He thinks he has got my Fellowship, and is going to use it for the
benefit of the College farms. I can tell you he won't like it one bit
when I reappear at the College Meeting."

"The Bursar and I shall have plenty of time for an explanation--later,"
said Pluto.

THE DIFFICULTIES OF MR. BULL {77}

I have been a good deal distressed lately by the reverses of my friend
John Bull, who is one of the leading tradesmen in this town. Everybody
knows his establishment. It does a very large business indeed: you can
get practically everything there--coals, Lee-Metford rifles, chocolate,
biscuits, steam-engines, Australian mutton, home and colonial produce of
every kind, in short. My old friend is tremendously proud of his shop,
which, as he says, he has made what it is by strict honesty (and really
for an enterprising tradesman he is fairly honest) and attention to
business principles. He has put a deal of capital into it, and spares no
expense in advertising; in fact, he keeps a regular department for
poetry, which is written on the premises and circulated among customers
and others, and explains in the most beautiful language that the house in
Britannia Road is the place to go to for everything. John, who prides
himself on his literary taste, considers this to be the finest poetry
ever written; and Mrs. Bull reads it out to him in the evening before he
has his regular snooze after supper.

Everything was going on swimmingly until this unfortunate Hooligan
trouble began. I must explain to you that Mr. Bull owns a great deal
more property than the actual premises where he transacts business.
Somehow or other, in course of time he has become the proprietor of bits
and scraps all over the town and suburbs--tenements, waste lands,
eligible building sites, warehouses, and what not--the whole making up
what, if it was put together, would be a very considerable estate. How
it all came into John Bull's hands nobody knows properly; indeed, I don't
think he does himself. Some of it was bought, and bought pretty dear
too. Some of it was left to him. A good deal of it he--one doesn't like
using the word, but still--well, in fact, took; but, mind you, he always
took everything for its good, and for the ultima