The door was opened. As to the
reasons why it was not opened sooner, these are most tediously set
forth in Professor Sir T.K. Slibby's "Half-Hours With Historic Doors,"
as also in a fragment at one time attributed to Oleaginus Silo but now
proven a forgery by Miss Evans. Enough for our purpose, merry reader
of mine, that the door was opened.
The man, as men will, went in. And there, for God's sake and by
the grace of Mary Mother, let us leave him; for the truth of it is
that his strength was all in his lungs, and himself a poor, weak,
clout-faced, wizen-bellied, pin-shanked bloke anyway, who at Trinity
Hall had spent the most of his time in reading Hume (that was
Satan's lackey) and after taking his degree did a little in the way
of Imperial Finance. Of him it was that Lord Abraham Hart, that
far-seeing statesman, said, "This young man has the root of the matter
in him." I quote the epigram rather for its perfect form than for its
truth. For once, Lord Abraham was deceived. But it must be remembered
that he was at this time being plagued almost out of his wits by
the vile (though cleverly engineered) agitation for the compulsory
winding-up of the Rondoosdop Development Company. Afterwards, in
Wormwood Scrubbs, his Lordship admitted that his estimate of his young
friend had perhaps been pitched too high.
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