It was not in what Disraeli absurdly called “the City of the Future,” but in Utopia, that I was guest at one “inspection dinner,” that may seem to deserve a record. It was at St. Michael’s R.C., and I had inspected the schools that day. Who was there? There was Canon A., my host; Father B., an Oxford man, formerly in Deacon’s Orders in the Church of England, afterwards a ’vert; Mr. C., treasurer of the schools, a man of good Lancashire Roman Catholic family, belonging rather to the Newman cult than to the Manningites; for the rest, interested in cotton, or silk, or wheat: Father O’Dowd, who had been trained at the English college in Rome, and had lived for some years in foreign parts; Father O’Flynn, who had come over from County Cork to see his old schoolfellow the Canon; they had been boys together at Ushaw, or Stonyhurst, or somewhere, and had kept up their old friendship in spite of distance. Lastly, there was Dr. Walsh, a keen-witted man of the world, who had a good R.C. practice in the town, and was much esteemed by my host, though he was suspected of some laxity in his views and in the observance of his duties. We dined well, of course; but, while the maids were hovering about, the conversation was limited to local topics, neutral politics, and--for O’Dowd’s sake--recollections of foreign towns. We could not even allude to the schools, much to my relief, for the maids’ sisters, cousins, and aunts were at St. Michael’s, as teachers, or scholars. But when dessert brought freedom, we expanded, and Father O’Flynn with his pleasant Irish good-fellowship said to me across the table--he and I sat left and right of our host: “I hope ye’ve been pleased with the Canon’s schools this morning, Mr. Inspector?” I laughed, accepting this as a gambit, not a question; and replied that I was always pleased with St. Michael’s. “Well, ye know,” he continued, “ye can’t make a silk purse out of unsuitable materials: but they’re a highly intelligent lot of boys that they turn out: I met one of them on my way up from the station, and he got ’lave to carry me bhag,’ because his brogue won my heart. He said he went to St. Michael’s when he was a kid, but now he’d ‘gotten a surficate’; what did he mean by that, now? Got a certificate of exemption, _and he passed an examination for it_? Well, well, it’s easy ye are, I can see, and there’s hopes for the Canon yet. So I just asked him how many yards there were to a foot and he said ‘twelve’; and I put it to him whether that wasn’t too liberal an allowance? Oh, he was much hurt: ‘anny ways,’ he said, ‘that was the way they larned me at St. Michael’s _avverdepoyse_.’” Our host shook with laughter: the boy was Jimmy Nolan, and he was “not all there.” There had been a fight at a wake in the house when Jimmy was a baby, and Jimmy had a nasty fall on the floor, and something had gone wrong.