Boarding schools -- England -- Fiction; University of Oxford -- Fiction
This Galer was a small, bunched-up, greasy man with a ragged black
moustache, scarlet cheeks, and great watery eyes underhung by bags of
loose skin. During the mornings he shuffled about the stair in a pink
shirt, green fancy waistcoat, grey flannel trousers, and lurid yellow
boots; later on he retired with a large black bag to the Iffley Road,
where he was supposed to maintain a timid wife and innumerable
children. It was a matter of conjecture among the residents on Galer's
stair whether he wrapped up the coal in newspaper or whether the bag
contained coal and food exquisitely mingled. By the afternoon the bag
had always achieved a certain bulk and wore a swollen look. But it was
as a politician that Galer excelled. No truer Tory than Galer ever
voted for Valentia or took the Empire to heart. He did not exactly
know where the map was red or how it became red; not that that would
have mattered, for Galer was not the man to be worried about little
points of honesty. But he knew that much of the map was red, and he
was genuinely glad about it: it seemed to him a logical inference and a
capital idea that the map should be all red.
Of the catch-word he was a master. Few conversations with Galer were
allowed to end without some allusion to 'Hands Across the Sea' and the
Thickness of Blood (compared with water) and the 'Necessity for a Cash
nexus just to symbolise the brother'ood.'
But it was the new type of 'Deemagogue' that really vexed Galer.
During the previous evening Galer, after explaining to Martin the ways,
the abominably expensive ways of the Oxford world, had gone on to
elaborate his favourite theme. And now, before eight o'clock in the
morning, he was at it again.
"Clors against Clors," he grunted. "Wot I says is Capital and Labour
'as identical interests. Identical. These 'ere strikes plays the
jimmy with both."
Martin yawned, turned over, and pretended to sleep.
"Quarter to eight, sir," continued Galer. "It was orl right when these
Unions knew their proper business and kept their contrax. Wot I says
is a bargain is a bargain." And with this discovery he went wheezing
from the room.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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