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variety; Blues in every shade from pale azure to the kingfisher’s own colour: hundreds of little Skippers; and then the Hawks, a whole row of Death’s Heads, olive-shaded Limes, Poplars ranging from palest grey to burnt sienna, Eyed Hawks with sunset-flushed hindwings, exquisite pink Elephants (not those that topers see!) Bee Hawks and Humming Birds. But there was a gap above the label “
Sphinx convolvuli
”; and Dick, gulping hard and trembling with the ecstasy of glorious martyrdom, said suddenly: “
You
have him, sir! Put him in that space!”
    â€œNo,” said Mr. Chorlton; but hesitantly.
    â€œPlease,”
begged Dick; as a man might offer up his one,his only ewe-lamb as a burnt offering to a god, and yet the cry escapes him, “Please,
please
take it quickly, lest I repent!”
    Mr. Chorlton, who was infinitely wise and who knew all this, didn’t hesitate any longer. He said: “I’ll keep him, then, because I’ve got a cabinet to keep him in; but he’s still yours and you can come and see him whenever you want to. And now,” he added, “we’ll celebrate the capture of the first living Convolvulus Hawk Moth I’ve ever seen.” He went to the sideboard and fetched glasses and bottles. For himself he poured out a glass of port; for us, fizzy lemonade, into which he tipped enough port to make it pink. “This wine,” he said, “is Mr. Cockburn’s rarest and most precious; and it’s the last bottle; and a great many people would have fits if they knew I poured it into fizzy lemonade. But Convolvulus Hawks are rarer even than rare wine, and deserve a proper libation when they appear.”
    We drank to the moth ceremonially; then we sat down, and there was a moment’s silence, and suddenly we all three asked questions simultaneously:
    â€œSir, have you read
all
the books in this room?”
    â€œSir, are you really a fisherman as well?”
    â€œSir, did you play cricket for Somerset?”
    Mr. Chorlton poured himself out another glass of port.
    â€œI’ve read most of the books; not quite all; but I’ve still got a few years, I hope, to go on reading. Yes, I am a fisherman, and one day I’ll teach you how to catch chub with a fly. And I did play for Somerset, and fielded against Archie Maclaren’s 424, which as you know is the highest score in county cricket. Look it up in Wisden, and you’ll find out roughly how old I am; if you can do the sum, which is doubtful.”
    It was dark before we left. We made Mr. Chorlton show us the caterpillars—which turned out to be Kentish Glories—and then he tied us each a chub-fly out of a starling’s feather and a brown hen’s hackle, and finally we persuaded him to read us the Frogs’ Chorus from Aristophanes which always delighted us with its deep-throated “Brekekoex-koex-koex.” He said good-bye to us, and added:
    â€œNow for an hour I am going to contemplate
Sphinx Convolvuli
and finish the port.”
    â€œThe whole bottle?” asked Donald, full of awe.
    â€œThe whole bottle,” he said firmly.
    As we went down the drive between the dark rhododendrons Dick put into words what we were all thinking. “He can read a Latin book as if he were reading the paper,” he said, “and Greek as easy as English. And he knows every moth that flies. And he’s a fisherman. And he’s played county cricket. What a mixture of things he can do!”
    â€œAnd the port,” we said. “Don’t forget the port. He’s going to drink the whole bottle!”
    I think we all resolved that when we grew up we’d be like Mr. Chorlton; and it wasn’t a bad resolution, for I’ve never met another man who could so beautifully walk the tightrope between the
bios praktikos
and the
bios theoretikos
and get so much pleasure out of the two kinds of life which lie on either side.
A Liberal Education
    We had