A few were bent seriously on work and promotion, the majority were equally in different about the one and the other, and the remainder were professional idlers--most successful in their profession.
Such were the hopeful materials which Railsford was expected to inspire with a noble zeal in the pursuit of classics, history, and divinity.

It would have bets as easy--at least, so it seemed to the master--to instruct he monkey-house at the Zoological Gardens.

The few workers (scarcely one of whom, by the way, was in his own house) formed a little _coterie_ apart, and grabbed up whatever morsels of wisdom and learning their master could afford to let drop in the midst of his hand-to-hand combat with the forces of anarchy and lethargy.

But he had little to say to them.

His appeals were addressed to the body of gaping, half- amused, half-bored loungers in the middle of the room, who listened pleasantly and forgot instantaneously; who never knew where to go on, and had an inveterate knack of misunderstanding the instructions for next day's work.