If only...............................

      Walter Bagehot's father showed more confidence in his son that Walter did in himself.  In preparation for joining the family bank, the refugee from the law lived in Langport to make a study of double-entry bookkeeping.  He admitted that the theory of accounting "is agreeable and pretty, but the practice perhaps as horrible as anything ever was."  The student who had kept up with the pyrotechnical intellect of Augustus De Morgan at University College could not seem to add or subtract.  "If only," Bagehot playfully moaned to a school friend, "my relations would admit that sums are matters opinion."

-James Grant, Bagehot: The Life and Times of the Greatest Victorian