prevalent sentiment. "It came to that, I think, Smith." "Yes, Jones, it
certainly came to that."

The only two men who still cared nothing about it were Geoffrey and the
surgeon. There sat the first, stolidly neutral--indifferent alike to
the attack and the defense. There stood the second, pursuing his
investigation--with the growing interest in it of a man who was
beginning to see his way to the end.

"Hear my defense, gentlemen," continued Sir Patrick, as courteously
as ever. "You belong, remember, to a nation which especially claims to
practice the rules of fair play. I must beg to remind you of what I said
in the garden. I started with a concession. I admitted--as every person
of the smallest sense must admit--that a man will, in the great majority
of cases, be all the fitter for mental exercise if he wisely combines
physical exercise along with it. The whole question between the two is a
question of proportion and degree, and my complaint of the present time
is that the present time doesn't see it. Popular opinion in England
seems to me to be, not only getting to consider the cultivation of the
muscles as of equal importance with the cultivation of the mind, but to
be actually extending--in practice, if not in theory--to the absurd
and dangerous length of putting bodily training in the first place of
importance, and mental training in the second. To take a case in point:
I can discover no enthusiasm in the nation any thing like so genuine and
any thing like so general as the enthusiasm excited by your University
boat-race. Again: I see this Athletic Education of yours made a
matter of public celebration in schools and colleges; and I ask any
unprejudiced witness to tell me which excites most popular enthusiasm,
and which gets the most prominent place in the public journals--the
exhibition, indoors (on Prize-day), of what the boys can do with their