“Come here, my boy, and hold out your hand.” When he had done so, Mr. Turvey gave him two sharp cuts with a cane. “There now, go down to the bottom of the class and try not to be so extremely truthful in future.” Then, turning to my father, he said, “I hate caning them, but it is the only way to teach them. I really do believe that boy will know better than to say what he thinks another time.”
He repeated his question to the class, and the head-boy answered, “Because, sir, extremes meet, and extreme truth will be mixed with extreme falsehood.”
“Quite right, my boy. Truth is like religion; it has only two enemies—the too much and the too little. Your answer is more satisfactory than some of your recent conduct had led me to expect.”
“But, sir, you punished me only three weeks ago for telling you a lie.”
“Oh yes; why, so I did; I had forgotten. But then you overdid it. Still it was a step in the right direction.”
“And now, my boy,” he said to a very frank and ingenuous youth about halfway up the class, “and how is truth best reached?”
“Through the falling out of thieves, sir.”
“Quite so. Then it will be necessary that the more earnest, careful, patient, self-sacrificing, enquirers after truth should have a good deal of the thief about them, though they are very honest people at the same time. Now what does the man” (who on enquiry my father found to be none other than Mr. Turvey himself) “say about honesty?”
“He says, sir, that honesty does not consist in never stealing, but in knowing how and where it will be safe to do so.”
“Remember,” said Mr. Turvey to my father, “how necessary it is that we should have a plentiful supply of thieves, if honest men are ever to come by their own.”
He spoke with the utmost gravity, evidently quite easy in his mind that his scheme was the only one by which truth could be successfully attained.
“But pray let me have any criticism you may feel inclined to make.”
“I have none,” said my father. “Your system commends itself to common sense; it is the one adopted in the law courts, and it lies at the very foundation of party government. If your academic bodies can supply the country with a sufficient number of thieves—which I have no doubt they can—there seems no limit to the amount of truth that may be attained. If, however, I may suggest the only difficulty that occurs to me, it is that academic thieves show no great alacrity in falling out, but incline rather to back each other up through thick and thin.”
“Ah, yes,” said Mr. Turvey, “there is that difficulty; nevertheless circumstances from time to time arise to get them by the ears in spite of themselves. But from whatever point of view you may look at the question, it is obviously better to aim at imperfection than perfection; for if we aim steadily at imperfection, we shall probably get it within a reasonable time, whereas to the end of our days we should never reach perfection. Moreover, from a worldly point of view, there is no mistake so great as that of being always right.” He then turned to his class and said—
“And now tell me what did the Sunchild tell us about God and Mammon?”
The head-boy answered: “He said that we must serve both, for no man can serve God well and truly who does not serve Mammon a little also; and no man can serve Mammon effectually unless he serve God largely at the same time.”
“What were his words?”
“He said, ‘Cursed be they that say, “Thou shalt not serve God and Mammon, for it is the whole duty of man to know how to adjust the conflicting claims of these two deities.” ’ ”
Here my father interposed. “I knew the Sunchild; and I more than once heard him speak of God and Mammon. He never varied the form of the words he used, which were to the effect that a man must serve either God or Mammon, but that he could not serve both.”
“Ah!” said Mr. Turvey, “that no doubt was his exoteric teaching, but Professors Hanky and Panky have assured me most solemnly that his esoteric teaching was as I have given it. By the way, these gentlemen are both, I understand, at Sunch’ston, and I think it quite likely that I shall have a visit from them this afternoon. If you do not know them I should have great pleasure in introducing you to them; I was at Bridgeford with both of them.”
“I have had the pleasure of meeting them already,” said my father, “and as you are by no means certain that they will come, I will ask you to let me thank you for all that you have been good enough to show me, and bid you good afternoon. I have a rather pressing engagement—”
“My dear sir, you must please give me five minutes more. I shall examine the boys in the Musical Bank Catechism.” He pointed to one of them and said, “Repeat your duty towards your neighbour.”
“My duty towards my neighbour,” said the boy, “is to be quite sure that he is not likely to borrow money of me before I let him speak to me at all, and then to have as little to do with him as—”
At this point there was a loud ring at the door bell. “Hanky and Panky come to see me, no doubt,” said Mr. Turvey. “I do hope it is so. You must stay and see them.”
“My dear sir,” said my father, putting his handkerchief up to his face, “I am taken suddenly unwell and must positively leave you.” He said this in so peremptory a tone that Mr. Turvey had to yield. My father held his handkerchief to his face as he went through the passage and hall, but when the servant opened the door he
