It trains the mind--it teaches boys to think, they say.
It doesn't. In reality it is a cut and dried subject easy to fit
into a school curriculum. Its sacrosanctity saves
educationalists an enormous amount of trouble, and its chief use
is to enable mindless young men from the universities to make a
dishonest living by teaching it to others, who in their turn may
teach it to a future generation.
I am mad to-night--why have I indulged in this diatribe against
mathematics? I must find some vent, I suppose. I see now. I
was saying that I earned my right to live, that I am not an
idler. I cling strenuously to the claim. A man cannot command
respect, even his own, by the mere reason of his _vie
sentimentale_. And, after what I have done to-day, I must force
my claim to the respect which on other grounds I have forfeited.
I spent, then, my day in unremitting toil. But this evening the
horrible craving for her came over me. Such a little thing
brought it about. Antoinette, who disapproves of the amorphous
British lumps of sugar, has found some emporium where she can buy
the regular parallelopiped of the Continent, and these she
provides for my afterdinner coffee.
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