"The ladies did their best, I must say, out there," said Harry, neglecting this challenge. "But then those fellows expected, don't you know, that it was to be the same in town. We told them it couldn't be just the same, with all a woman's engagements. Nothing much to do in Florence, but a whirl in London—but some of them didn't see it. We told them to come to our rooms and welcome; but after a while they didn't seem to care so much for our rooms. They want social advancement, don't you see—and to make friends there will be of use."
"The Bruither, tho far as I could make out," said Scarfield, "wanths a public-house—thays they all come to public-houthes in the course of time. And that's his ambition—if you like to call it thocial advancement, you can."
"The Bruiser is abnormal," said Bailey. "He's a creation of false needs and false interests, so far as Oxford is concerned. Curiosity to know what such a being is like must have been your motive, Scarfield: for I ask what would the highest illumination and the purest influence do for a man like that—all physical force and brute strength—with an ambition for a public-house: a public-house!"
"I shouldn't mind starting a public-house myself," said Sutton; "fine sphere, if you approach it rightly. Why, you might get the very lives of all these fellows in your hands, and play upon them like an instrument. Get them to drop their beer, don't you know, little by little. I once offered to take the pledge myself if one of them would. And he did—or rather she did, for it was a woman, as it happened. Oh, they're very open to influence! You can get them to do almost anything—for a time."
"Now it is fully established what an Oxford Settlement can do in a poor neighbourhood, we have the game in our own hands," said another. "Give them refined pleasures—that's the thing—and you see how it answers. In Bethnal Green they respond to Brahms and Rubinstein, as none of your smart people do. You see it is virgin soil—they never knew till now what beautiful things were."
"And yet they say the People's Palace is a failure!"
"Ah, I told you! It was not in the hands of University men. I said to Bristowe, 'Don't you think a few Oxford men mixing among them would soon change the tone?' He didn't seem to see it. But there is nothing else. Diffuse culture among the masses: let them see what it has done for us: give them examples to study as well as principles. There is no other way to work—at least it is the best. Christ and the apostles did the same sort of thing. It was more rudimentary in their day. Civilisation has multiplied the wants of humanity, and scientific methods have increased our power. We have got everything in our hands. What are politics or theories? a settlement of ours in every district, leaving our own sphere to leaven theirs—that is what the people want."
"When they don't like the Bruither better, and his public-house," said Scarfield. "I had thome of those fellowth up once to thee my Tondo. They stared, and then they made their remarks. 'I don't call her pretty,' they thaid—'not a bit; and nobody could write like that. I'm sure I couldn't write with my hand out like that; and them shavers in wings making eyes at her: and she might a put a rag on the babby to thave it from catching cold.'"
Scarfield was something of a mimic, and the party was in his rooms, and there was a laugh, but a laugh very speedily suppressed.
"That's not my experience," said Bailey. "I find them full of respect. If you fellows would only put your shoulders to the wheel, and all of you do something, by Heaven we'd move the world."