“Now we’ll go to another little point that the gentleman forgot. He recommended you to LEARN--to make yourselves better and wiser from day to day. But he didn’t tell you why it is that you won’t learn, in spite of his advice. I suppose that, being a foreigner, he was afraid of hurting your feelings by talking too freely to you. But you’re not so thin-skinned as to take offence at a little plain-speaking, I’ll be bound; so I tell you straight out that the reason you won’t learn is not that you don’t want to be clever, or that you are lazier than many that have learned a great deal, but just because you’d like people to think that you know everything already--because you’re ashamed to be seen going to school; and you calculate that if you only hold your tongue and look wise you’ll get through life without your ignorance being found out. But where’s the good of lies and pretence? What does it matter if you get laughed at by a cheeky brat or two for your awkward beginnings? What’s the use of always thinking of how you’re looking, when your sense might tell you that other people are thinking about their own looks and not about yours? A big boy doesn’t look well on a lower form, certainly, but when he works his way up he’ll be glad he began. I speak to you more particularly because you’re Londoners; and Londoners beat all creation for thinking about themselves. However, I don’t go with the gentleman in everything he said. All this struggling and striving to make the world better is a great mistake; not because it isn’t a good thing to improve the world if you know how to do it, but because striving and struggling is the worst way you could set about doing anything. It gives a man a bad style, and weakens him. It shows that he don’t believe in himself much. When I heard the professor striving and struggling so earnestly to set you to work reforming this, that, and the other, I said to myself, ‘He’s got himself to persuade as well as his audience. That isn’t the language of conviction.’ Whose--” “Really, sir,” said Lucian Webber, who had made his way to the table, “I think, as you have now addressed us at considerable length, and as there are other persons present whose opinions probably excite as much curiosity as yours--” He was interrupted by a, “Hear, hear,” followed by “No, no,” and “Go on,” uttered in more subdued tones than are customary at public meetings, but with more animation than is usually displayed in drawing-rooms. Cashel, who had been for a moment somewhat put out, turned to Lucian and said, in a tone intended to repress, but at the same time humor his impatience, “Don’t you be in a hurry, sir. You shall have your turn presently. Perhaps I may tell you something you don’t know, before I stop.” Then he turned again to the company, and resumed.