“I wish I could say the same of myself.  I grow more intolerant of fools as the years roll on.  If I had a son, I was saying, I would take him from school at the age of fourteen, not a moment later, and put him for two years in a commercial house.  Wake him up; make an English citizen of him.  Teach him how to deal with men as men, to write a straightforward business letter, manage his own money and gain some respect for those industrial movements which control the world.  Next, two years in some wilder part of the world, where his own countrymen and equals by birth are settled under primitive conditions, and have formed their rough codes of society.  The intercourse with such people would be a capital invested for life.  The next two years should be spent in the great towns of Europe, in order to remove awkwardness of manner, prejudices of race and feeling, and to get the outward forms of a European citizen.  All this would sharpen his wits, give him more interest in life, more keys to knowledge.  It would widen his horizon.  Then, and not a minute sooner, to the University, where he would go not as a child but a man capable of enjoying its real advantages, attend lectures with profit, acquire manners instead of mannerisms and a University tone instead of a University taint.  What do you think?”

“It sounds a trifle revolutionary,” commented the bishop, with a smile.  “But it appeals to me.  Education is a matter than lies very near my heart.  In fact, I had some thoughts of retiring from the Church and devoting myself to it.  I feel, I don’t know why, as if I could do more in that direction.”

Keith merely observed: 

“That is interesting.  Perhaps you have reached the end of the Church.”

He liked this young Colonial bishop, and his straightforward, earnest face.  Being of a complicated nature himself, he was always drawn towards men of single aims and purposes.

The other would have been pleased to know why Keith found it “interesting” and what he meant by that other phrase, bur forbore to inquire.  He was rather a silent man, though not deficient in mother wit.  He lit a cigarette, and waited.

“Let us discourse of education!” said his host with that elaborate manner which the bishop afterwards discovered to be peculiar to him.  “I think we need not differentiate between the sexes.  In proportion as more careers are opened to women, their teaching will tend to converge with that of men.  That specifically female education in domestic arts has been rendered superfluous by commercial products.  I will tell you what I think.  A sound schooling should teach manner of thought rather than matter.  It should have a dual aim—­to equip a man for hours of work, and for hours of leisure.  They interact; if the leisure is misspent, the work will suffer.  As regards the first, we cannot expect a school to purvey more than a grip of general principles.  Even that is seldom given.  The second should