“You wouldn't wonder if you knew how an uneducated man like me feels, when he comes to a place like Oxford.”
“Uneducated, sir!” said Tom. “Why your education has been worth twice as much, I'm sure, as any we get here.”
“No, sir; we never learnt anything in the navy when I was a youngster, except a little rule-of-thumb mathematics. One picked up a sort of smattering of a language or two knocking about the world, but no grammatical knowledge, nothing scientific. If a boy doesn't get a method, he is beating to windward in a crank craft all his life. He hasn't got any regular place to stow away what he gets into his brains, and so it lies tumbling about in the hold, and he loses it, or it gets damaged and is never ready for use. You see what I mean, Mr. Brown?”
“Yes, sir. But I'm afraid we don't all of us get much method up here. Do you really enjoy reading Thucydides now, Captain Hardy?”
“Indeed I do, sir, very much,” said the captain. “There's a great deal in his history to interest an old sailor, you know. I dare say, now, that I enjoy those parts about the sea-fights more than you do.” The Captain looked at Tom as if he had made an audacious remark.
“I am sure you do, sir,” said Tom, smiling.
“Because you see, Mr. Brown,” said the Captain, “when one has been in that sort of thing oneself, one likes to read how people in other times managed, and to think what one would have done in their place. I don't believe that the Greeks just at that time were very resolute fighters, though. Nelson or Collingwood would have finished that war in a year or two.”
“Not with triremes, do you think, sir?” said Tom.
