“Why, Jack, we're changing characters to-night. Fancy your coming out in the abusive line! Why I never said harder things of Alma Mater myself. However, there's plenty of flunkeyism and money-worship everywhere else.”
“Yes, but it is not so heart-breaking in other places. When one thinks what a great centre of learning and faith Oxford ought to be like—that its highest educational work should just be the deliverance of us all from flunkeyism and money-worship—and then looks at matters here without rose-colored spectacles, it gives one sometimes a sort of chilly leaden despondency, which is very hard to struggle against.”
“I am sorry to hear you talk like that, Jack, for one can't help loving the place after all.”
“So I do, God knows. If I didn't I shouldn't care for its shortcomings.”
“Well, the flunkeyism and money-worship were bad enough, but I don't think they were the worst things—at least not in my day. Our neglects were almost worse than our worships.”
“You mean the want of all reverence for parents? Well, perhaps that lies at the root of the false worships. They spring up on the vacant soil.”
“And the want of reverence for women, Jack. The worst of all, to my mind!”
“Perhaps you are right. But we are not at the bottom yet.”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean that we must worship God before we can reverence parents or women, or root out flunkeyism and money-worship.”