“As an ex-member of the Board of the Faculty of Arts—” began the Tutor.
“Ah, dear me!” replied Pluto. “Then that won’t do either? Those Boards must be excellent from my point of view. I have often wished I had one or two down here. But I’m really afraid we’re getting to the end of the list. And, you know, if we can’t provide you with anything, back you’ll have to go. I won’t keep you, eating your head off. But, talk of eating! shall I put you up beside Prometheus, and ask his eagle to do a little overtime work by taking a turn at your liver? I am afraid we could hardly stand you a private eagle all to yourself. It is said to be quite painful; I really don’t think you can have gone through that, with all your experience.”
“Oh yes I have,” returned the Tutor; “a long course of Hall dinners has familiarized me with every possibility in the way of liver trouble. The eagle business would be the merest crambe repetita.”
“Bless the man!” cried Pluto, justly provoked. “Very well; then you can’t stay here, that’s all. I’ve given you all the alternatives Hades has at its disposal, and you tell us you have been through them all in your University! All I can say is, you had better go back to it, and stay there.”
“The Bursar,” said the Tutor, “will not be best pleased to see me again. He thinks he has got my Fellowship, and is going to use it for the benefit of the College farms. I can tell you he won’t like it one bit when I reappear at the College Meeting.”
“The Bursar and I shall have plenty of time for an explanation—later,” said Pluto.
THE DIFFICULTIES OF MR. BULL [77]
I have been a good deal distressed lately by the reverses of my friend John Bull, who is one of the leading tradesmen in this town. Everybody knows his establishment. It does a very large business indeed: you can get practically everything there—coals, Lee-Metford rifles, chocolate, biscuits, steam-engines, Australian mutton, home and colonial produce of every kind, in short. My old friend is tremendously proud of his shop, which, as he says, he has made what it is by strict honesty (and really for an enterprising tradesman he is fairly honest) and attention to business principles. He has put a deal of capital into it, and spares no expense in advertising; in fact, he keeps a regular department for poetry, which is written on the premises and circulated among customers and others, and explains in the most beautiful language that the house in Britannia Road is the place to go to for everything.
John, who prides himself on his literary taste, considers this to be the finest poetry ever written; and Mrs. Bull reads it out to him in the evening before he has his regular snooze after supper.
Everything was going on swimmingly until this unfortunate Hooligan trouble began. I must explain to you that Mr. Bull owns a great deal more property than the actual premises where he transacts business. Somehow or other, in course of time he has become the proprietor of bits and scraps all over the town and suburbs—tenements, waste lands, eligible building sites, warehouses, and what not—the whole making up what, if it was put together, would be a very considerable estate. How it all came into John Bull’s hands nobody knows properly; indeed, I don’t think he does himself. Some of it was bought, and bought pretty dear too. Some of it was left to him. A good deal of it he—one doesn’t like using the word, but still—well, in fact, took; but, mind you, he always took everything for its good, and for the ultimate benefit of society, not for any selfish reasons; so that to call Mr. Bull a pirate, as Dubois does who keeps the toy-shop over the way, is manifestly absurd. Anyhow, it is a very fine property, and would be bigger still if Jonathan C., a cousin of the family, hadn’t