He had begun his work in a great glow of enthusiasm; but it had been suspended time after time.  He had sketched his theory out; but it lay there in one of his table-drawers, a skeleton not clothed with words.  Why had he let this all drop?  Why had he contented himself with the easy, sociable life?  Effective though he was as a teacher, he had no real confidence in the things which he taught.  They only seemed to him a device of reason for expending its energies, just as men deprived by complex life of manual labour sought to make up for the loss by the elaborate pursuit of games.  He did not touch the springs of being at all.  He had collapsed, he felt, into placid acquiescence; Nature had been too strong for him.  He had fitted so easily into the pleasant scheme of things, and he was doing nothing in the world but helping to prolong the delusion, just as men set painted glass in a window to shut out the raincloud and the wind.  He was a conformist, he felt, in everything—­in religion, intellect, life—­but a sceptic underneath.  Was he not perhaps missing the whole object and aim of life and experience, in a fenced fortress of quiet?  The thought stung him suddenly with a kind of remorse.  He was doing no part of the world’s work, not sharing its emotions or passions or pains or difficulties; he was placidly at ease in Zion, in the comfortable city whose pleasures were based on the toil of those outside.  That was a hateful thought!  Had not the boy been right after all?  Must one not somehow link one’s arm with life and share its pilgrimage, even in weariness and tears?

There came a tap at the door, and one of his shyest pupils entered—­ a solitary youth, poor and unfriended, who was doing all he could to get a degree good enough to launch him in the world.  He came to ask some advice about work.  Howard entered into his case as well as he could, told him it was important that he should get certain points clear, gave him an informal lecture, distinctly and emphatically, and made a few friendly remarks.  The man beamed with unexpressed gratitude.

“What solemn nonsense I have been talking!” thought Howard to himself as the young man slipped away.  “Of course he must learn all this—­but what for?  To get a mastership, and to retail it all over again!  It’s a vicious circle, this education which is in touch with nothing but the high culture of a nation which lived in ideas; while with us culture is just a plastering of rough walls—­no part of the structure!  Why cannot we put education in touch with life, try to show what human beings are driving at, what arrangements they are making that they may live?  It is all arrangements with us—­ the frame for the picture, the sheath for the sword—­and we leave the picture and the sword to look after themselves.  What a wretched dilettante business it all is, keeping these boys practising postures in the anteroom of life!  Cannot we get at the real thing, teach people to do things, fill their minds with ideas, break