The Rubicon

That evening the Professor of Ignorance sat long with paper spread before him, and with a pen in his hand, but he wrote nothing. The window of his study looked out on to the street, which was lit by many gas-lamps. At length he dipped his pen into the ink, and wrote this: We should judge men by their best, not by their worst; by their possibilities, not by their limitations. Next morning he read what he had written the night before, and smiled to himself. I have seen that before, he thought. He took a book from the little shelf that stood close to his right hand, and referred to it. I am now quite sure that what I have written is true, he said.
The Professor of Ignorance.
AUTHOR OF DODO

The little red-roofed town of Hayes lies in a furrow of the broad-backed Wiltshire Downs; it was once an important posting station, and you may still see there an eighteenth century inn, much too large for the present requirements of the place, and telling of the days when, three times a week, the coach from London used to pull up at its hospitable door, and wait there half-an-hour while its passengers dined. The inn is called the Grampound Arms, and you will find that inside the church many marble Grampounds recline on their tombs, or raise hands of prayer, while outside in the churchyard, weeping cherubs, with reversed torches, record other pious and later memories of the same family.
But almost opposite the Grampound Arms you will notice a much newer inn, where commercial gentlemen make merry, called the Aston Arms, and on reference to monumental evidence, you would also find that cherubs are shedding similar pious tears for a Sir James Aston, Bart., and his wife, and, thirty years later, for James Aston, first Lord Hayes, and his wife. But for the Astons, no marble knights keep watch on Gothic tombs.
The river Kennet, in its green wanderings, has already passed, before it reaches Hayes, two houses, one close down by the river, the other rather higher up and on the opposite bank. The smaller and older of the two is the residence of Mr. Grampound, the larger and newer of Lord Hayes. These trifling facts, which almost all the inhabitants of Hayes could tell you, will sufficiently indicate the mutual position of the two families in the latter half of the nineteenth century.