That they used a finer accent than their
servants, signified only that they had grown up amid falsities, and
were enabled, by the help of money, to dwell above-stairs, instead of
with their spiritual kindred below.'
The evils of indiscriminate education and the follies of our grotesque
examination system were one of Gissing's favourite topics of denunciation
in later years, as evidenced in this characteristic passage in his later
manner in this same book:--
'She talked only of the "exam," of her chances in this or that
"paper," of the likelihood that this or that question would be "set."
Her brain was becoming a mere receptacle for dates and definitions,
vocabularies and rules syntactic, for thrice-boiled essence of
history, ragged scraps of science, quotations at fifth hand, and all
the heterogeneous rubbish of a "crammer's" shop. When away from her
books, she carried scraps of paper, with jottings to be committed to
memory. Beside her plate at meals lay formulae and tabulations. She
went to bed with a manual, and got up with a compendium.'
The conclusion of this book and its predecessor, _The Odd Women_,[20] marks
the conclusion of these elaborated problem studies.
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