 it be
brandy and water? No. It shall be gin and water. Gin is the more wholesome
liquor.«
    So gin it was, hot and stiff too.
    Who can wonder at him or do anything but pity him? Was he not headmaster of
Roughborough School? To whom had he owed money at any time? Whose ox had he
taken? Whose ass had he taken, or whom had he defrauded? What whisper had ever
been breathed against his moral character? If he had become rich it was by the
most honourable of all means - his literary attainments; over and above his
great works of scholarship his Meditations upon the Epistle and Character of St.
Jude had placed him among the most popular of English theologians; it was so
exhaustive that no one who bought it need ever meditate upon the subject again -
indeed it exhausted all who had anything to do with it. He had made £5000 by
this work alone, and would very likely make another £5000 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
