Page:Arminell, a social romance (1896).djvu/481

 A RAZOR TO CUT CABBAGES.

old man told me one day that he had spent fifty years of his life in making a concordance of the Bible—he had never heard of Cruden's work. The labour of fifty years thrown away! I know another who sank all his savings in publishing a Law Compendium he had compiled, and when it was published sold two copies.

Jingles was going through a heart-breaking experience. He was discovering that all he had acquired in school and university was a disadvantage to him in the position in which he now found himself.

He had been well educated, had been polished and sharpened; but the money spent on his education might as well have been thrown into the sea, and the time devoted to learning have been as profitably given up to billiards.

This would not have been the case had Giles Inglett Saltren been able to enter a learned profession, but as this was out of the question, his education was profitless. He had been qualified to take his place in a social class in which he was no more able to show himself.

One day Jingles had given his razor to a boy to sharpen for him. The lad took it to a grindstone and put an edge to the back. "Please, sir," said the fellow when reprimanded, "the front was middling sharp, so I thought