Something that Patrick Galway said to him once, when he and John Marsh were talking of Trinity, came back to his memory. "The College is living on Oliver Goldsmith and Edmund Burke," Galway said, and added, "It's like a maiden lady in a suburb giving herself airs because her great-grandfather knew somebody who was great. It hasn't produced a man who's done anything for Ireland, except harm, not in the last hundred years anyhow. Lawyers and parsons and officials, that's the best Trinity can do! If you think of the Irishmen who've done anything fine for Ireland, you'll find that, when they came from universities at all, they came from Oxford or Cambridge, anywhere on God's earth but Trinity. Horace Plunkett was at Oxford...." "Eton, too!" Marsh had interjected. "Yes, Eton!" Galway went on. "Think of it! An Irish patriot coming from Eton where you'd think only Irish oppressors would come from! If Plunkett had been educated in an Irish school and sent to Trinity, do you think he'd have done anything decent for Ireland?" "Yes," Henry had replied promptly. "He's that kind of man!" "No, he wouldn't," Galway retorted. "They'd have educated the decency out of him, and he'd have been a ... a sort of Lord Ashtown!" But Henry would have none of that. He would not believe that a man's nature can be altered by pedagogues. "Horace Plunkett would have been a good Irishman if he'd been born and reared and educated in an Orange Lodge," he said. "I'm not talking about natures," Galway replied. "I'm talking about beliefs. They'd have told him it was no good trying to build up an Irish nation...." "He wouldn't have believed them," Henry retorted. "Damn it, Galway, do you think a man like Plunkett would let a lot of fiddling schoolmasters knock him off his balance?" "I'm a schoolmaster," Galway answered, "and I know what schoolmasters can do!" His voice changed, deepening, as he spoke. "I know what the young teachers in Ireland mean to do!" "What do they mean to do?" Henry had asked jokingly. "Make Irishmen," Galway answered. "If only Trinity would make Irishmen," he went on, "we'd all be saved a deal of trouble. But it won't, and when a man of family, like Plunkett, is born with good will for Ireland, he has to go to England to be educated. And he ought to be educated in Ireland, and he would be if Trinity were worth a damn. I wish I were Provost, I'd teach Irishmen to be proud of their birth!" "Well, when we've made Ireland a nation," said Henry, chaffing him, "we'll make you Provost of Trinity!" and Galway, though he knew that Henry was jesting, smiled with pleasure. "When Ireland is a nation!" Marsh murmured dreamily. 2