The great mass of Upsidonian classical scholars were content to employ themselves usefully in examining the different collocations of words in various authors, and in the schools a great deal was learnt by heart. The classics were considered a most valuable exercise of the faculties, and the conservative teachers and men of learning held that it would be a thousand pities to drop them, simply because they did not help the learner to lose money. [25] This was a favourite subject of conversation with ladies in Upsidonia. CHAPTER XIV It was about a week after I had been welcomed into the Perry family that we were all asked to take high tea at the house of Mrs. Perry's sister, the Countess of Blueberry. The most important thing that had happened in the meantime was that I had fallen deeply in love with Miriam. We had been much together, and our conversations had largely concerned themselves with the curious state of things obtaining in the country from which I had come. Miriam was deeply interested in what I told her, but I had to be very careful. In some respects she became more and more inclined to approve of a country in which wealth might be used to lessen care, instead of increasing it, and in which even the richest were under no cloud of inferiority. The pictures I painted of English life under conditions of monetary ease appealed alike to her natural tastes, of which in Upsidonia she had to be ashamed, if she were to show right feeling, and to the philanthropic ideals in which she had been brought up. She could never get it out of her mind that we showed great nobility of behaviour in treating rich people with a total absence of contempt, and I did not desire that she should, although I insisted upon the fact itself. But every now and again I came up against a painful shrinking. I had to be extraordinarily careful how I dealt with the subject of food, for instance, and I think that if I had ever described to her a city banquet, or even a college feast, I should have wiped out at a stroke all the admiration she was inclined to show for the habits and customs of my beloved country. But short as had been the time since I had come to Magnolia Hall, I had already adapted myself somewhat to the Upsidonian point of view--indeed, a good deal more than I should have thought possible. In the matter of food and drink, I was now inclined to despise the delicate living that I had at first taken such pleasure in. I can only say on my own behalf--if I have seemed to represent myself as greedier than I will confess to being--that I had been living a hard active life for some weeks past, and was in the most abounding physical health; also that Mrs. Lemon, the Perrys' cook, was a supreme artist.[26] After all, my usual life was necessarily abstemious, and it had happened to me before to get very tired of luxurious living, when I had been staying with friends accustomed to it, and to go back to my own moderate habits with relief.