While his brain
accepted the black creed, his very body rebelled against it.
As he put it, his right hand taught him terrible things.
As the authorities of Cambridge University put it, unfortunately,
it had taken the form of his right hand flourishing a loaded
firearm in the very face of a distinguished don, and driving
him to climb out of the window and cling to a waterspout.
He had done it solely because the poor don had professed
in theory a preference for non-existence. For this
very unacademic type of argument he had been sent down.
Vomiting as he was with revulsion, from the pessimism that had
quailed under his pistol, he made himself a kind of fanatic
of the joy of life. He cut across all the associations
of serious-minded men. He was gay, but by no means careless.
His practical jokes were more in earnest than verbal ones.
Though not an optimist in the absurd sense of maintaining that
life is all beer and skittles, he did really seem to maintain
that beer and skittles are the most serious part of it.
`What is more immortal,' he would cry, `than love and war?
Type of all desire and joy--beer. Type of all battle
and conquest--skittles.'
"There was something in him of what the old world called
the solemnity of revels--when they spoke of `solemnizing'
a mere masquerade or wedding banquet.
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