“I mean what we call here the kestrel,” I replied.
Stanley put his glass in his eye and looked at me, and said, “Dear me! I was told you were a very clever naturalist.”
“I don’t think natural history consists in giving long names to animals,” I said, “but in knowing their habits.”
“Indeed?” said Stanley. “But I am afraid you don’t learn much classics at Woolwich.”
“None after we enter,” I replied. “We then learn only useful things, and don’t cram our heads with pedantic knowledge.”
“I’m very sorry to see the youngsters of the present day so radical in their ideas,” said Stanley, addressing the General. “There is no training for a gentleman equal to a thorough classical education.”
“I don’t agree with you,” said the General. “Of course you Oxford men think there’s nothing like leather, but I would sooner have my son know French and German well, than Greek and Latin, and the latter would be more practically useful to him than the former; and as to a mathematical education, it is essential in the present day. I fancy that your great classics are usually men who live more in the past than for the present or future, and that won’t do now.”
“A man who is not a good classic is always making himself ridiculous because he is sure to make a false quantity, and his ignorance is seen by others.”
“Ah, that’s a sort of pedantry,” replied the General, “which is what I set my face against. Your classic belongs to a large school, and prides himself immensely on his knowledge. He only values men according to what he finds they know of classics. Now, this is a mistake. You will find that horse-jockeys and stablemen do the same. If you make a remark to a horsey man, showing you are not up in horse slang, he at once sets you down as a muff, for he has only one standard of excellence, viz, knowledge of horses, just as you have of classics. Just now you took it out of Shepard there about the Latin names of hawks, and then you seemed to think that knowing these names made a naturalist. This I don’t agree to. Now, I’d back Shepard to tell quicker than you a summer from a winter cage when he saw one.”
“I think I could tell that,” replied Stanley.