He went downstairs and put on a hat, then passed through the partition-doorway that separated the house from the printing-office. It was the middle of the week, the slack time between issues; copy for the next one lay littered on his desk —mostly local affairs—council meetings, church activities, births, marriages, and funerals. Occasionally he wrote an editorial about some national or international event, and the one he had composed that morning faced him from the copy-desk as unfathomably as if someone else had written it in another language. It read:

“These are times when the clouds of war roll back and THE SUN OF HUMAN BETTERMENT shines out to be a lamp of memory for the future. Let us hope, therefore, that AUGUST 31st, NINETEEN HUNDRED AND TWENTY-ONE, the date selected as that of the official end of the Great War, will have more than a merely legal significance, that it will symbolize the actual dying-out of hatreds and bitterness both at home and abroad. In this connection it is good news that the Washington Conference is soon to convene, and that the problem of world-wide DISARMAMENT will then be tackled in real earnest. We of this town, who have just dedicated our first post-war plan for A BETTER BROWDLEY, can feel especially proud, for our own achievement makes us part of a mighty movement in which men of goodwill all over the world are straining to participate.”

(A pretty fair example, incidentally, of George’s editorial writing —typical, at any rate, in its use of capitals, in its opening metaphor that almost gets out of hand, and in its tendency to glib phrases. Typical also of George’s fondness for linking local and world affairs into a pleasing dish of optimism.)

And now, reading it over, he had difficulty in gathering what it was all about. Disarmament? DISARMAMENT?… The word echoed meaninglessly in his mind as he sought, even for a moment, to concentrate on something non-personal. What did he know about disarmament? And at the form of that question he smiled, because of the oddest recollection that came to him there and then, as he crossed the printing-office to the door leading into Market Street.

It was of something that had happened several years before, when he had just acquired the almost bankrupt Guardian and was full of visions of the kind of influence a small-town paper could wield, perhaps even nationally, if its editor were the right sort, and surely the right sort must be well-educated, which surely in its turn could mean nothing less than a university degree. So that had become one of his numerous ambitions, and since Oxford and Cambridge were out of the question for a man who had a job to do, he had concentrated on a near-by provincial foundation of decent repute that offered degrees by examination only. It had been a hard struggle, even so, for he had originally left school at the age of thirteen, and though the following decade and a half had contained a good deal of self-education there were many deplorable gaps. He could write and speak forcefully, for instance, but before beginning to study he had scarcely heard of the technicalities of grammar, he had small knowledge of history, and none at all of any foreign language. At the first of the two necessary examinations he was baffled by the academic atmosphere, by the courtesy bordering on indifference of the pedagogue in charge (so unlike the nagging, shouting schoolmasters of his boyhood days), and he was rather dashed by an English paper which, though offering the most generous choice of questions, could not avoid the discovery of so much that he did not know. To one question, couched in that very phrase—“What do you know of the Pathetic Fallacy?” —he had replied, pathetically enough: “Nothing”; and there were other matters nearly as hopeless. Leaving the examination hall after that three-hour battle he had been fairly certain of failure.

But a few weeks later he received a note asking him to appear at the same place for oral questioning—which, he was cautioned, did not necessarily imply that he had passed the written tests. The coolness of the warning reinforced his pessimism, so that he was in a thoroughly black mood by the time he faced the ordeal. A tall, thin, spectacled man with a dome-like forehead and very precise clipped speech presided at the interview. (Ever afterwards he was the personification of an ideal in George’s mind —the pure scholar, unworldly, incomparable, serenely aloof; so that on meeting Lord Winslow, for instance, he felt he already knew the type.)

The prototype had talked pleasantly and informally with George’s examination papers before him, and also (though George had not known this) notes of reminder that the examinee was thirty-one years old, had had nothing but an elementary-school education, but was already owner and editor of a local newspaper as well as a town councillor with reputedly advanced views —altogether a rather remarkable specimen. Clearly George both puzzled and attracted him, though he gave no sign of it; he merely steered the conversation from one subject to another—which was not difficult, for George loved to talk. After half an hour or so the older man nodded, picked up the examination papers, cleared his throat, and began rather uncomfortably: “A pity, Mr. Boswell, that you have done so badly in one paper —English—that your total marks do not reach the required minimum.”

George’s conviction of failure, which had somehow become suspended during the conversation, now returned with a hard hit to the pit of the stomach. “Aye,” he said heavily. “I guessed as much.”

“Do you think you will try again, Mr. Boswell?”

“I dunno, sir. I dunno if I’ll have the time to.”

“Why not?”

“You see, I’m on the local Council and I run a newspaper—there’s a heap of work in all that—work that I can’t cut down on. If it was just a question of giving up fun or a hobby I wouldn’t mind, but when it means important things…”

“Such as?”

“Well, sir, I doubt if you’d be interested in all the details, but I’m trying to get a post-war slum-clearance scheme adopted by the Council, and that’s a job, I can tell you—if you knew the sort of place Browdley is.”

“H’m, yes… I understand. And I do not dispute the importance of such work, or the priority you feel you must give to it. What does puzzle me —a little—is your motive in entering for this examination at all. Did you feel that a university degree would help you politically— or professionally?”

“No, sir, it isn’t that. But I thought it might help me—sometimes —inside myself—to feel I was properly educated.”

“And what do you mean by ‘properly educated’?”

George pondered a moment, then replied: “I’ll put it this way, sir— sometimes I read a book that seems to me just plain stupid, but because I’m not properly educated I can’t be sure whether IT’S stupid or whether I’M stupid.”

A smile creased over the older man’s face as he burrowed afresh among the papers, finally discovering one and holding it up before his spectacles. “H’m… h’m… Such a pity, Mr. Boswell—such a pity… Mind you, I didn’t mark these English papers myself, so of course I don’t know whether…” And then a long pause, punctuated by more throat-clearings and spectacle- fidgetings. “Take this question, for instance—‘What do you know of the Pathetic Fallacy?’ I see, Mr.