5000 pounds before he died. A man who had done all this and wanted a
piece of bread and butter had a right to announce the fact with some pomp
and circumstance. Nor should his words be taken without searching for
what he used to call a "deeper and more hidden meaning." Those who
searched for this even in his lightest utterances would not be without
their reward. They would find that "bread and butter" was Skinnerese for
oyster-patties and apple tart, and "gin hot" the true translation of
water.

But independently of their money value, his works had made him a lasting
name in literature. So probably Gallio was under the impression that his
fame would rest upon the treatises on natural history which we gather
from Seneca that he compiled, and which for aught we know may have
contained a complete theory of evolution; but the treatises are all gone
and Gallio has become immortal for the very last reason in the world that
he expected, and for the very last reason that would have flattered his
vanity. He has become immortal because he cared nothing about the most
important movement with which he was ever brought into connection (I wish
people who are in search of immortality would lay the lesson to heart and
not make so much noise about important movements), and so, if Dr Skinner
becomes immortal, it will probably be for some reason very different from
the one which he so fondly imagined.

Could it be expected to enter into the head of such a man as this that in
reality he was making his money by corrupting youth; that it was his paid
profession to make the worse appear the better reason in the eyes of
those who were too young and inexperienced to be able to find him out;
that he kept out of the sight of those whom he professed to teach
material points of the argument, for the production of which they had a
right to rely upon the honour of anyone who made professions of
sincerity; that he was a passionate half-turkey-cock half-gander of a man
whose sallow, bilious face and hobble-gobble voice could scare the timid,
but who would take to his heels readily enough if he were met firmly;
that his "Meditations on St Jude," such as they were, were cribbed
without acknowledgment, and would have been beneath contempt if so many
people did not believe them to have been written honestly? Mrs Skinner
might have perhaps kept him a little more in his proper place if she had
thought it worth while to try, but she had enough to att