In this strain he talked for a quarter of an hour, and held the audience spellbound. He had really interested them. Here was something new, something worth listening to. He was received with a roar of clapping. After his speech everything else fell flat. Christy made one or two super-subtle remarks which no one understood. There was nothing left for Pothering to say; the motion was then put before the House and the debate developed into a farce. Idiot after idiot got up and made some infantile qualification of an earlier statement--all of them talked off the point. So much so, in fact, that Turner was beginning a tale of a fight he had had with a coster down Cheap Street when Christy called him to order. Gordon at once rose in protest. "Gentlemen, I address the Chair. It is preposterous that Mr Turner should have been refused a hearing. We may have lost what would perhaps have thrown new light on the subject. Doubtless he had carefully selected this particular anecdote out of a life, alas, too full of excitement" (a roar greeted this, Christy had beaten Turner that very morning for eating chocolates in German), "with the express view of pointing out the superiority of the classics. Doubtless the rough in question, not knowing the custom in Homeric contests, had failed to propitiate the gods, while he, the narrator, had rushed into Back Lane behind Mother Beehive's charming old-world residence, and having offered a prayer to Mars, waited for his burly antagonist in the darkness, and as the vile man, clearly one of St Paul's 'god haters'" (that time the Sixth were reading the "Romans") "thundered by, he smote him with a stone above the eye, and left him discomfited and, like OEdipus, well nigh blind. Here we see----" But the meeting never found out what they really saw. Gordon was called to order, and sat down amid a tumult of applause. One or two more speakers brought fresh evidence to bear on the subject; and then there was the division. The moderns won by a huge majority. As the rabble passed into the passage Gordon heard Ferrers say to Christy in his most patronising manner: "Rather wiped the ground with you, didn't we?... Well, never mind, you stood no earthly.... Days of the classics are over. Still, you fought well.... Third line of defence--_ad triarios_.... I remember a bit of my classics." Gordon was borne out on the stream past the matron's room to the end of the passage, and the rest of Ferrers's speech was lost. From this day the Stoics underwent a complete change. The whole nature of the society was altered. Ferrers was so absolutely different from anything that a master had appeared to be from time immemorial. He was essentially of the new generation, an iconoclast, a follower of Brooke and Gilbert Cannan, heedless of tradition, probing the root of everything. At the end of the term Christy resigned his presidency. He could not keep pace with the whirlwind Ferrers.