protested that the said University was a school of the devil, and
several interchanges of discourtesy took place.

Mr. Shortt, M. P., begged to suggest, as a matter of business,
that for the present the child was not capable of receiving any
ideas whatever, and might die, or prove to be dumb, or an idiot,
and so require no education. Ought they not to postpone this
discussion until the subject was old enough to be worth
consideration?

It was Mr. Shortt's habit to show his practical vein by
business-like obstructions of this kind. He had been able a
score of times to demonstrate to the House of Commons how silly
it was to consider probabilities. In fact, he was opposed heart
and soul to prophetic legislation; he would live, legislatively,
from hand to mouth.

But the committee would not allow Mr. Shortt to run away with the
bone of contention.

The Rev. Dr. M'Gregor Lucas, of the National Caledonian
Believers, had been silent too long to contain himself further.
This man needs some particular description whenever his name is
made public. Nay, for this he lives, and by it, some think. At
all events, he appears to be equally eager for rebuke and
applause; they both involve notoriety, and notoriety is sure to
pay. Few absurdities had been overlooked by his shallow
ingenuity. Simply to have invested his limited mental endowments
in trying to make the world believe him a genius, would have been
only so like what many thousands are doing as to have absolved