He could talk about Persia and the Trade winds, the Reform Bill and the cycle of the harvests.

Books were on his shelves by Wells and Shaw; on the table serious six-penny weeklies written by pale men in muddy boots--the weekly creak and screech of brains rinsed in cold water and wrung dry--melancholy papers.
"I don't feel that I know the truth about anything till I've read them both!" said Mrs.Plumer brightly, tapping the table of contents with her bare red hand, upon which the ring looked so incongruous.
"Oh God, oh God, oh God!" exclaimed Jacob, as the four undergraduates left the house.

"Oh, my God!" "Bloody beastly!" he said, scanning the street for lilac or bicycle--anything to restore his sense of freedom.
"Bloody beastly," he said to Timmy Durrant, summing up his discomfort at the world shown him at lunch-time, a world capable of existing--there was no doubt about that--but so unnecessary, such a thing to believe in--Shaw and Wells and the serious sixpenny weeklies! What were they after, scrubbing and demolishing, these elderly people?
Had they never read Homer, Shakespeare, the Elizabethans?
He saw it clearly outlined against the feelings he drew from youth and natural inclination.

The poor devils had rigged up this meagre object.

Yet something of pity was in him.