Gillingham looked up from his easy-chair with a superior smile. 'I don't object to his not _joining_ it,' he said, with a curl of the cultured lip, for the Born Poet of course represented culture in this scratch collection of ardent young Philistines; 'but why, in the name of goodness, didn't he say outright like a man he couldn't afford it? It's the base hypocrisy of his putting his refusal upon moral grounds, and calling himself a total abstainer, that sets my back up. If a man's poor in this world's goods, and can't afford to drink a decent wine, in heaven's name let him say so; but don't let him go snuffling about, pretending he doesn't care for it, or he doesn't want it, or he doesn't like it, or he wouldn't take it if he could get it. I call that foolish and degrading, as well as unmanly. Even Shakespeare himself used to frequent the Mermaid tavern. Why, where would all our poetry be, I should like to know, if it weren't for Bacchus? Bacchus, ever fair and ever young? “War, he sang, is toil and trouble; Honour but an empty bubble; Never ending, still beginning; Fighting still, and still destroying; If the world be worth thy winning, Think, oh, think it worth enjoying.”' And Gillingham closed his eyes ecstatically as he spoke, and took another sip at the thirty-six Amontillado, in a rapture of divine poesy. 'Hear, hear!' Faussett cried, clapping his hands with delight. 'The Born Poet for a song! The Born Poet for a recitation! You men should just hear him spout “Alexander's Feast.” It's a thing to remember! He's famous as a spouter, don't you know, at Rugby. Why, he's got half the British poets or more by heart, and a quarter of the prose authors. He can speak whole pages. But “Alexander's Feast” is the thing he does the very best of all. Whenever he recites it he brings the house down.' 'Respect for an ancient and picturesque seat of learning prevents me from bringing down the roof of Durham College, then,' Gillingham answered lightly, with a slight sneer for his friend's boyish enthusiasm. 'Besides, my dear boy, you wander from the subject. When the French farmer asked his barn-door fowls to decide with what sauce they would wish to be eaten, they held a meeting of their own in the barton-yard, and sent their spokesman to say, “If you please, M. le Propriétaire, we very much prefer _not_ to be eaten.” “Mes amis,” said the farmer, “vous vous écartez de la question.” And that's your case, Faussett. The business before the house is the moral turpitude and mental obliquity of the man Plantagenet, who refuses--as he says, on conscientious grounds--to join the college wine-club. Now, I take that as an insult to a society of gentlemen.'