have got the Logic and the Chemistry, and those
are what I care most about. I dare say Peak has beaten me in Geology.'

The appearance in the lower part of the hall of a dark-robed
procession, headed by the tall figure of the Principal, imposed a
moment's silence, broken by outbursts of welcoming applause. The
Professors of Whitelaw College were highly popular, not alone with the
members of their classes, but with all the educated inhabitants of
Kingsmill; and deservedly, for several of them bore names of wide
recognition, and as a body they did honour to the institution which had
won their services. With becoming formality they seated themselves in
face of the public. On tables before them were exposed a considerable
number of well-bound books, shortly to be distributed among the
collegians, who gazed in that direction with speculative eyes.

Among the general concourse might have been discovered two or three
representatives of the wage-earning multitude which Kingsmill depended
upon for its prosperity, but their presence was due to exceptional
circumstances; the College provided for proletarian education by a
system of evening classes, a curriculum necessarily quite apart from
that followed by the regular students. Kingsmill, to be sure, was no
nurse of Toryism; the robust employers of labour who sent their sons to
Whitelaw--either to complete a training deemed sufficient for an active
career, or by way of transition-stage between school and
university--were for the most part avowed Radicals, in theory scornful
of privilege, practically supporters of that mode of freedom which
regards life as a remorseless conflict. Not a few of the young men
(some of these the hardest and most successful workers) came from poor,
middle-class homes, whence, but for Sir Job's foundation, they must
have set forth into the world with no better equipment of knowledge
than was supplied by some 'academy' of the old type: a glance
distinguished such students from the well-dressed and well-fed
offspring of Kingsmill plutocracy. The note of the assembly was
something other than refinement; rather, its high standard of health,
spirits, and comfort--the characteristic of Capitalism. Decent
reverence for learning, keen appreciation of scientific power, warm
liberality of thought and sentiment within appreciable limits,
enthusiasm for economic, civic, national ideals,--such attributes were
abundantly discoverable in each serried row. From the exp