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Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches by Maurice Baring
page 97 of 190 (51%)
The man who gave good advice got a "First" in Mods, and everyone felt
confident he would get a first in Greats; he did brilliantly in nearly
all his papers; but during the Latin unseen a temporary and sudden lapse
of memory came over him and he forgot the English for _manubioe_, which
the day before he had known quite well means prize-money. In fact the
word was written on the first page of his note-book. The word was in his
brain, but a small shutter had closed on it for the moment and he could
not recall it. He looked over his neighbour's shoulder. His neighbour
had translated it "booty." He copied the word mechanically, knowing
it was wrong. As he did so he was detected and accused of cribbing.
He denied the charge, the matter was investigated, the papers were
compared, and the man who gave good advice was disqualified. In all his
other papers he had done incomparably better than anyone else.

When he left Oxford the man who gave good advice went into a Government
office. He had not been in it long before he perceived that by certain
simple reforms the work of the office could be done twice as effectually
and half as expensively. He embodied these reforms in a memorandum and
they were not long afterwards adopted. He became private secretary to
Snipe, a rising politician and persuaded him to change his party and his
politics. Snipe, owing to this advice, became a Cabinet Minister, and
the man who gave good advice, having inherited some money, stood for
Parliament himself. He stood as a Conservative at a General Election and
spoke eloquently to enthusiastic meetings. The wire-pullers prophecied
an overwhelming majority, when shortly before the poll, at one of his
meetings, he suddenly declared himself to be an Independent, and made a
speech violently in favour of Home Rule and conscription. The result was
that the Liberal Imperialist got in by a huge majority, and the man who
gave good advice was pelted with rotten eggs.

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