For many it was a profound comfort to be one of a society completely sure of itself, completely certain of its values, completely without misgivings about whether it was living a good life. In the college there were men varied enough to delight anyone with a taste in human things: but none of them, except Roy Calvert in one of his fits of melancholy, ever doubted that it was a good thing to be a fellow. They took it for granted, felt they were envied, felt it was right they should be envied: enjoyed the jokes about dons, which to some, such as Chrystal, Brown, and Francis Getliffe, as they thought of their busy efficient lives, seemed peculiarly absurd: wanted to grow old in the college, and spend their last years as Gay and Pilbrow were doing now.
When I arrived in the college, I had already moved about a good deal among the layers of society; and I had not come to the end of my journey yet. I had the luck to live intimately among half a dozen different vocations. Of all those I had the chance to see, the college was the place where men lived the least anxious, the most comforting, the freest lives.