To both their minds it was perfectly plain that an honourable bargain was being struck.
"Yes, Mr.Tomlinson," said the president, as they emerged from the building, "no doubt you begin to realize our unhappy position.

Money, money, money," he repeated half-musingly.

"If I had the money I'd have that whole building down and dismantled in a fortnight." From the central building the three passed to the museum building, where Tomlinson was shown a vast skeleton of a Diplodocus Maximus, and was specially warned not to confuse it with the Dinosaurus Perfectus, whose bones, however, could be bought if anyone, any man of large heart; would come to the university and say straight out, "Gentlemen, what can I do for you ?" Better still, it appeared the whole museum which was hopelessly antiquated, being twenty-five years old, could be entirely knocked down if a sufficient sum was forthcoming; and its curator, who was as ancient as the Dinosaurus itself, could be dismissed on half-pay if any man had a heart large enough for the dismissal.
From the museum they passed to the library, where there were full-length portraits of more founders and benefactors in long red robes, holding scrolls of paper, and others sitting holding pens and writing on parchment, with a Greek temple and a thunderstorm in the background.
And here again it appeared that the crying need of the moment was for someone to come to the university and say, "Gentlemen, what can I do for you ?" On which the whole library, for it was twenty years old and out of date, might be blown up with dynamite and carted away.
But at all this the hopes of Tomlinson sank lower and lower.

The red robes and the scrolls were too much for him.
From the library they passed to the tall buildings that housed the faculty of industrial and mechanical science.

And here again the same pitiful lack of money was everywhere apparent.