They were going to ancient historical places, full of grave and
beautiful associations; places to go to, it seemed to me, with some
single like-minded associate, places to approach with leisurely and
untroubled mind, with no feeling of a programme or a time-table--
and least of all in the company of busy professional people with an
academical cicerone.

Still, I suppose that this is true devotion to one's profession.
They will be able, they think, to discourse easily and, God help
us, picturesquely about what they have seen, to intersperse a
Thucydides lesson with local colour, and to describe the site of
the temple of Delphi to boys beginning the Eumenides. It is very
right and proper, no doubt, but it produces in me a species of
mental nausea to think of the conditions under which these
impressions will be absorbed. The arrangements for luncheon, the
brisk interchange of shop, the cheery comments of fellow-tradesmen,
the horrible publicity and banality of the whole affair!

My two other colleagues were going, one to spend a holiday at
Brighton--which he said was very bracing at Easter, adding that he
expected to fall in with some fellows he knew. They will all stroll
on the Parade, smoke cigarettes together, and adjourn for a game of
billiards. No doubt a very harmless way of passing the time, but
not to me enlivening. But Walters is a conventional person, and, as
long as he is doing what he would call "the correct thing," he is
perfectly and serenely content. The sixth and last is going to
Surbiton to spend the holidays with a mother and three sisters, and
I think he is the most virtuously employed of all. He will walk out
alone, with a terrier dog, before lunch; and after lunch he will go
out with his sisters; and perhaps the vicar will come to tea. But