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[Illustration: Book Cover]




THE FURTHER ADVENTURES
OF
MR. VERDANT GREEN




FRONTISPIECE.
(See page 30.)

[Illustration: CUTHBERT BEDE, INVT. KT. DELT. E. EVANS, SC]

MR. VERDANT GREEN FURNISHES THE SUBJECT FOR A STRIKING
FRONTISPIECE.




THE FURTHER ADVENTURES
OF
MR. VERDANT GREEN,
An Oxford Under-Graduate.


BEING A CONTINUATION OF "THE ADVENTURES OF MR. VERDANT GREEN, AN OXFORD
FRESHMAN."


BY CUTHBERT BEDE, B.A.


With numerous Illustrations,
DESIGNED AND DRAWN ON THE WOOD BY THE AUTHOR.


  "A COLLEGE JOKE TO CURE THE DUMPS."
  SWIFT.


SECOND EDITION.


H. INGRAM & CO.
MILFORD HOUSE, MILFORD LANE, STRAND, LONDON;
AND BY ALL BOOKSELLERS.
1854.




CONTENTS.


                                                                    PAGE
  CHAPTER I.     Mr. Verdant Green recommences his existence as
                    an Oxford Undergraduate                            1
  CHAPTER II.    Mr. Verdant Green does as he has been done by         5
  CHAPTER III.   Mr. Verdant Green endeavours to keep his Spirits
                    up by pouring Spirits down                        14
  CHAPTER IV.    Mr. Verdant Green discovers the difference between
                    Town and Gown                                     26
  CHAPTER V.     Mr. Verdant Green is favoured with Mr. Bouncer's
                    Opinions regarding an Under-graduate's
                    Epistolary Communications to his Maternal
                    Relative                                          39
  CHAPTER VI.    Mr. Verdant Green feathers his oars with skill
                    and dexterity                                     50
  CHAPTER VII.   Mr. Verdant Green partakes of a Dove-tart and
                    a Spread-eagle                                    59
  CHAPTER VIII.  Mr. Verdant Green spends a Merry Christmas and
                    a Happy New Year                                  68
  CHAPTER IX.    Mr. Verdant Green makes his first appearance on
                    any Boards                                        75
  CHAPTER X.     Mr. Verdant Green enjoys a real Cigar                87
  CHAPTER XI.    Mr. Verdant Green gets through his Smalls            95
  CHAPTER XII.   Mr. Verdant Green and his Friends enjoy the
                    Commemoration                                    104




PART II.




CHAPTER I.

MR. VERDANT GREEN RECOMMENCES HIS EXISTENCE AS AN OXFORD UNDERGRADUATE.


The intelligent reader--which epithet I take to be a synonym for every
one who has perused the first part of the Adventures of Mr. Verdant
Green,--will remember the statement, that the hero of the narrative "had
gained so much experience during his Freshman's term, that, when the
pleasures of the Long Vacation were at an end, and he had returned to
Brazenface with his firm and fast friend Charles Larkyns, he felt
himself entitled to assume a patronising air to the Freshmen, who then
entered, and even sought to impose upon their credulity in ways which
his own personal experience suggested." And the intelligent reader will
further call to mind the fact that the first part of these memoirs
concluded with the words--"it was clear that Mr. Verdant Green had made
his farewell bow as an Oxford Freshman."

But, although Mr. Verdant Green had of necessity ceased to be "a
Freshman" as soon as he had entered upon his second term of
residence,--the name being given to students in their first term
only,--yet this necessity, which, as we all know, _non habet leges_,
will occasionally prove its rule by an exception; and if Mr. Verdant
Green was no longer a Freshman in name, he still continued to be one by
nature. And the intelligent reader will perceive when he comes to study
these veracious memoirs, that, although their hero will no longer
display those peculiarly virulent symptoms of freshness, which drew
towards him so much friendly sympathy during the earlier part of his
University career, yet that he will still, by his innocent simplicity
and credulity, occasionally evidence the truth of the Horatian maxim,--

  "Quo semel est imbuta recens, servabit odorem
  Testa diu;"[1]

which, when _Smart_-ly translated, means, "A cask will long preserve the
flavour, with which, when new, it was once impregnated;" and which, when
rendered in the Saxon vulgate, signifieth, "What is bred in the bone will
come out in the flesh."

It would, indeed, take more than a Freshman's term,--a two months'
residence in Oxford,--to remove the simple gaucheries of the country
Squire's hobbodehoy, and convert the girlish youth, the pupil of that
Nestor of Spinsters, Miss Virginia Verdant, into the MAN whose school
was the University, whose Alma Mater was Oxonia herself. We do not cut
our wise teeth in a day; some people, indeed, are so unfortunate as
never to cut them at all; at the best, two months is but a brief space
in which to get through this sapient teething operation, a short time in
which to graft our cutting on the tree of Wisdom, more especially when
the tender plant happens to be a Verdant Green. The golden age is past
when the full-formed goddess of Wisdom sprang from the brain of Jove
complete in all her parts. If our Vulcans now-a-days were to trepan the
heads of our Jupiters, they would find nothing in them! In these
degenerate times it will take more than one splitting headache to
produce _our_ wisdom.

So it was with our hero. The splitting headache, for example, which had
wound up the pleasures of Mr. Small's "quiet party," had taught him that
the good things of this life were not given to be abused, and that he
could not exceed the bounds of temperance and moderation without being
made to pay the penalty of the trespass. It had taught him that kind of
wisdom which even "makes fools wise;" for it had taught him Experience.
And yet, it was but a portion of that lesson of Experience which it is
sometimes so hard to learn, but which, when once got by heart, is like
the catechism of our early days,--it is never forgotten,--it directs us,
it warns us, it advises us; it not only adorns the tale of our life, but
it points the moral which may bring that tale to a happy and peaceful
end.

Experience! Experience! What will it not do? It is a staff which will
help us on when we are jostled by the designing crowds of our Vanity
Fair. It is a telescope that will reveal to us the dark spots on what
seemed to be a fair face. It is a finger-post to show us whither the
crooked paths of worldly ways will lead us. It is a scar that tells of
the wound which the soldier has received in the battle of life. It is a
lighthouse that warns us off those hidden rocks and quicksands where the
wrecks of long past joys that once smiled so fairly, and were loved so
dearly, now lie buried in all their ghastliness, stripped of grace and
beauty, things to shudder at and dread. Experience! Why, even Alma
Mater's doctors prescribe it to be taken in the largest quantities!
"Experientia--_dose it_!" they say: and very largely some of us have to
pay for the dose. But the dose does us good; and (for it is an
allopathic remedy), the greater the dose, the greater is the benefit to
be derived.

The two months' allopathic dose of Experience, which had been
administered to Mr. Verdant Green, chiefly through the agency of those
skilful professors, Messrs. Larkyns, Fosbrooke, Smalls, and Bouncer, had
been so far beneficial to him, that, in the figurative Eastern language
of the last-named gentleman, he had not only been "sharpened up no end
by being well rubbed against University bricks," but he had, moreover,
"become so considerably wide-awake, that he would very soon be able to
take the shine out of the old original Weazel, whom the pages of History
had recorded as never having been discovered in a state of somnolence."

Now, as Mr. Bouncer was a gentleman of considerable experience and was,
too, (although addicted to expressions not to be found in "the Polite
Preceptor,") quite free from the vulgar habit of personal flattery,--or,
as he thought fit to express it, in words which would have taken away my
Lord Chesterfield's appetite, "buttering a party to his face in the
cheekiest manner,"--we may fairly presume, on this strong evidence, that
Mr. Verdant Green had really gained a considerable amount of experience
during his Freshman's term, although there were still left in his
character and conduct many marks of viridity which--

  "Time's effacing fingers,"

assisted by Mr. Bouncer's instructions, would gradually remove. However,
Mr. Verdant Green had, at any rate, ceased to be "a Freshman" in name;
and had received that University promotion, which Mr. Charles Larkyns
commemorated by the following _affiche_, which our hero, on his return
from his first morning chapel in the Michaelmas term, found in a
conspicuous position on his oak.

  Commission signed by the Vice-Chancellor of the University
  of Oxford.

  MR. VERDANT GREEN to be an Oxford Undergraduate, _vice_ Oxford
  Freshman, SOLD out.

It is generally found to be the case, that the youthful Undergraduate
first seeks to prove he is no longer a "Freshman," by endeavouring to
impose on the credulity of those young gentlemen who come up as Freshmen
in his second term. And, in this, there is an analogy between the biped
and the quadruped; for, the wild, gambolling, school-boy elephant, when
he has been brought into a new circle, and has been trained to new
habits, will take pleasure in ensnaring and deluding his late companions
in play.

The "sells" by which our hero had been "sold out" as a Freshman, now
formed a stock in trade for the Undergraduate, which his experience
enabled him to dispose of (with considerable interest) to the most
credulous members of the generations of Freshmen who came up after him.
Perhaps no Freshman had ever gone through a more severe course of
hoaxing--to survive it--than Mr. Verdant Green; and yet, by a system of
retaliation, only paralleled by the quadrupedal case of the
before-mentioned elephant, and the biped-beadle case of the illustrious
Mr. Bumble, who after having his own ears boxed by the late Mrs. Corney,
relieved his feelings by boxing the ears of the small boy who opened the
gate for him,--our hero took the greatest delight in seeking every
opportunity to play off upon a Freshman some one of those numerous
hoaxes which had been so successfully practised on himself. And while,
in referring to the early part of his University career, he omitted all
mention of such anecdotes as displayed his own personal credulity in the
strongest light--which anecdotes the faithful historian has thought fit
to record,--he, nevertheless, dwelt with extreme pleasure on the
reminiscences of a few isolated facts, in which he himself appeared in
the character of the hoaxer.

These facts, when neatly garnished with a little fiction, made very
palatable dishes for University entertainment, and were served up by our
hero, when he went "down into the country," to select parties of
relatives and friends (N.B.--Females preferred). On such occasions, the
following hoax formed Mr. Verdant Green's _piece de resistance_.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Horace, Ep. Lib. I. ii., 69.




CHAPTER II.

MR. VERDANT GREEN DOES AS HE HAS BEEN DONE BY.


One morning, Mr. Verdant Green and Mr. Bouncer were lounging in the
venerable gateway of Brazenface. The former gentleman, being of an
amiable, tame-rabbit-keeping disposition, was making himself very happy
by whistling popular airs to the Porter's pet bullfinch, who was
laboriously engaged on a small tread-mill, winding up his private supply
of water. Mr. Bouncer, being of a more volatile temperament, was amusing
himself by asking the Porter's opinion on the foreign policy of Great
Britain, and by making very audible remarks on the passers-by. His
attention was at length riveted by the appearance on the other side of
the street, of a modest-looking young gentleman, who appeared to be so
ill at ease in his frock-coat and "stick-up" collars, as to lead to the
strong presumption that he wore those articles of manly dress for the
first time.

"I'll bet you a bottle of blacking, Giglamps," said little Mr. Bouncer,
as he directed our hero's attention to the stranger, "that this
respected party is an intending Freshman. Look at his customary suits of
solemn black, as Othello, or Hamlet, or some other swell, says in
Shakspeare. And, besides his black go-to-meeting bags, please to
observe," continued the little gentleman, in the tone of a wax-work
showman; "please to hobserve the pecooliarity hof the hair-chain,
likewise the straps of the period. Look! he's coming this way. Giglamps,
I vote we take a rise out of the youth. Hem! Good morning! Can we have
the pleasure of assisting you in anything."

"Yes, sir! thank you, sir," replied the youthful stranger, who was
flushing like a girl up to the very roots of his curly, auburn hair;
"perhaps, sir, you can direct me to Brazenface College, sir?"'

"Well, sir! it's not at all improbable, sir, but what I could, sir;"
replied Mr. Bouncer; "but, perhaps, sir, you'll first favour me with
your name, and your business there, sir."

"Certainly, sir!" rejoined the stranger; and, while he fumbled at his
card-case, the experienced Mr. Bouncer whispered to our hero, "Told you
he was a sucking Freshman, Giglamps! He has got a bran new card-case,
and says'sir' at the sight of the academicals." The card handed to Mr.
Bouncer, bore the name of "MR. JAMES PUCKER;" and, in smaller characters
in the corner of the card, were the words, "_Brazenface College,
Oxford_."

"I came, sir," said the blushing Mr. Pucker, "to enter for my
matriculation examination, and I wished to see the gentleman who will
have to examine me, sir."

"The doose you do!" said Mr. Bouncer sternly; "then young, man, allow me
to say, that you've regularly been and gone and done it, and put your
foot in it most completely."

"How-ow-ow, how, sir?" stammered the dupe.

"How?" replied Mr. Bouncer, still more sternly; "do you mean to brazen
out your offence by asking how? What _could_ have induced you, sir, to
have had printed on this card the name of this College, when you've not
a prospect of belonging to it--it may be for years, it may be for never,
as the bard says. You've committed a most grievous offence against the
University statutes, young gentleman; and so this gentleman here--Mr.
Pluckem, the junior examiner--will tell you!" and with that, little Mr.
Bouncer nudged Mr. Verdant Green, who took his cue with astonishing
aptitude, and glared through his glasses at the trembling Mr. Pucker,
who stood blushing, and bowing, and heartily repenting that his
school-boy vanity had led him to invest four-and-sixpence in "100 cards,
and plate, engraved with name and address."

"Put the cards in your pocket, sir, and don't let me see them again!"
said our hero in his newly-confirmed title of the junior examiner; quite
rejoiced at the opportunity afforded him of proving to his friend that
_he_ was no longer a Freshman.

"He forgives you for the sake of your family, young man!" said Mr.
Bouncer with pathos; "you've come to the right shop, for _this_ is
Brazenface; and you've come just at the right time, for here is the
gentleman who will assist Mr. Pluckem in examining you;" and Mr. Bouncer
pointed to Mr. Four-in-hand Fosbrooke, who was coming up the street on
his way from the Schools, where he was making a very laudable (but as it
proved, futile) endeavour "to get through his smalls," or, in other
words, to pass his Little-go examination. The hoax which had been
suggested to the ingenious mind of Mr. Bouncer, was based upon the fact
of Mr. Fosbrooke's being properly got-up for his sacrifice in a white
tie, and a pair of very small bands--the two articles, which, with the
usual academicals, form the costume demanded by Alma Mater of all her
children when they take their places in her Schools. And, as Mr.
Fosbrooke was far too politic a gentleman to irritate the Examiners by
appearing in a "loud" or sporting costume, he had carried out the idea
of clerical character suggested by the bands and choker, by a quiet,
gentlemanly suit of black, which, he had fondly hoped, would have
softened his Examiners' manners, and not permitted them to be brutal.

Mr. Four-in-hand Fosbrooke, therefore, to the unsophisticated eye of the
blushing Mr. Pucker, presented a very fine specimen of the Examining
Tutor; and this impression on Mr. Pucker's mind was heightened by Mr.
Fosbrooke, after a few minutes' private conversation with the other two
gentlemen, turning to him, and saying, "It will be extremely
inconvenient to me to examine you now; but as you probably wish to
return home as soon as possible, I will endeavour to conclude the
business at once--this gentleman, Mr. Pluckem," pointing to our hero,
"having kindly promised to assist me. Mr. Bouncer, will you have the
goodness to follow with the young gentleman to my rooms?"

Leaving Mr. Pucker to express his thanks for this great kindness, and
Mr. Bouncer to plunge him into the depths of trepidation by telling him
terrible _stories_ of the Examiner's fondness for rejecting the
candidates for examination, Mr. Fosbrooke and our hero ascended to the
rooms of the former, where they hastily cleared away cigar-boxes and
pipes, turned certain French pictures with their faces to the wall, and
covered over with an outspread _Times_ a regiment of porter and spirit
bottles which had just been smuggled in, and were drawn up rank-and-file
on the sofa. Having made this preparation, and furnished the table with
pens, ink, and scribble-paper, Mr. Bouncer and the victim were admitted.

"Take a seat, sir," said Mr. Fosbrooke, gravely; and Mr. Pucker put his
hat on the ground, and sat down at the table in a state of blushing
nervousness. "Have you been at a public school?"

"Yes, sir," stammered the victim; "a very public one, sir; it was a
boarding-school, sir; forty boarders, and thirty day-boys, sir; I was a
day-boy, sir, and in the first class."

"First class of an uncommon slow train!" muttered Mr. Bouncer.

"And are you going back to the boarding-school?" asked Mr. Verdant
Green, with the air of an assistant judge.

"No, sir," replied Mr. Pucker, "I have just done with it; quite done
with school, sir, this last half; and papa is going to put me to read
with a clergyman until it is time for me to come to college."

"Refreshing innocence!" murmured Mr. Bouncer; while Mr. Fosbrooke and
our hero conferred together, and hastily wrote on two sheets of the
scribble-paper.

[Illustration]

"Now, sir," said Mr. Fosbrooke to the victim, after a paper had been
completed, "let us see what your Latin writing is like. Have the
goodness to turn what I have written into Latin; and be very careful,
sir," added Mr. Fosbrooke, sternly, "be very careful that it is Cicero's
Latin, sir!" and he handed Mr. Pucker a sheet of paper, on which he had
scribbled the following:

  "To be Translated into Prose-y Latin, in the Manner of
  Cicero's Orations after Dinner.

      "If, therefore, any on your bench, my luds, or in this assembly,
      should entertain an opinion that the proximate parts of a
      mellifluous mind are for ever conjoined and unconnected, I submit
      to you, my luds, that it will of necessity follow, that such
      clandestine conduct being a mere nothing,--or, in the noble
      language of our philosophers, bosh,--every individual act of overt
      misunderstanding will bring interminable limits to the empiricism
      of thought, and will rebound in the very lowest degree to the
      credit of the malefactor."

  "To be Turned into Latin after the Master of the Animals
  of Tacitus.

      "She went into the garden to cut a cabbage to make an apple-pie.
      Just then, a great she-bear coming down the street, poked its nose
      into the shop-window. 'What! no soap!' So he died, and she (very
      imprudently) married the barber. And there were present at the
      wedding the Joblillies, and the Piccannies, and the Gobelites, and
      the great Panjandrum himself, with the little button on top. So
      they all set to playing Catch-who-catch-can, till the gunpowder
      ran out at the heels of their boots."

It was well for the purposes of the hoaxers that Mr. Pucker's
trepidation prevented him from making a calm perusal of the paper; and
he was nervously doing his best to turn the nonsensical English word by
word into equally nonsensical Latin, when his limited powers of Latin
writing were brought to a full stop by the untranslateable word "Bosh."
As he could make nothing of this, he wiped the perspiration from his
forehead, and gazed appealingly at the benignant features of Mr. Verdant
Green. The appealing gaze was answered by our hero ordering Mr. Pucker
to hand in his paper for examination, and to endeavour to answer the
questions which he and his brother examiner had been writing down for
him.

Mr. Pucker took the two papers of questions, and read as follows:

"HISTORY.

      "1. Draw a historical parallel (after the manner of Plutarch)
      between Hannibal and Annie Laurie.

      "2. What internal evidence does the Odyssey afford, that Homer
      sold his Trojan war-ballads at three yards an obolus?

      "3. Show the strong presumption there is, that Nox was the god of
      battles.

      "4. State reasons for presuming that the practice of lithography
      may be traced back to the time of Perseus and the Gorgon's head.

      "5. In what way were the shades on the banks of the Styx supplied
      with spirits?

      "6. Show the probability of the College Hornpipe having been used
      by the students of the Academia; and give passages from Thucydides
      and Tennyson in support of your answer.

      "7. Give a brief account of the Roman Emperors who visited the
      United States, and state what they did there.

      "8. Show from the redundancy of the word [Greek: gas] in
      Sophocles, that gas must have been used by the Athenians; also
      state, if the expression [Greek: oi Bharbaroi] would seem to
      signify that they were close shavers.

      9. Show from the-words 'Hoc erat in votis,' (Sat. VI., Lib. II.,)
      that Horace's favourite wine was hock, and that he meant to say
      'he always voted for hock.'

      "10. Draw a parallel between the Children in the Wood and Achilles
      in the Styx.

      "11. When it is stated that Ariadne, being deserted by Theseus,
      fell in love with Bacchus, is it the poetical way of asserting
      that she took to drinking to drown her grief?

      "12. Name the _prima donnas_ who have appeared in the operas of
      Virgil and Horace since the 'Virgilii Opera,' and 'Horatii Opera'
      were composed."

"EUCLID, ARITHMETIC, and ALGEBRA.

      "1. 'The extremities of a line are points.' Prove this by the rule
      of railways.

      "2. Show the fallacy of defining an angle, as 'a worm at one end
      and a fool at the other.'

      "3. If one side of a triangle be produced, what is there to
      prevent the other two sides from also being brought forward?

      "4. Let A and B be squares having their respective boundaries in E
      and W. ends, and let C and D be circles moving in them; the circle
      D will be superior to the circle C.

      "5. In equal circles, equal figures from various squares will
      stand upon the same footing.

      "6. If two parts of a circle fall out, the one part will cut the
      other.

      "7. Describe a square which shall be larger than Belgrave Square.

      "8. If the gnomon of a sun-dial be divided into two equal, and
      also into two unequal parts, what would be its value?

      "9. Describe a perpendicular triangle having the squares of the
      semi-circle equal to half the extremity between the points of
      section.

      "10. If an Austrian florin is worth 5.61 francs, what will be the
      value of Pennsylvanian bonds? Prove by rule-of-three inverse.

      "11. If seven horses eat twenty-five acres of grass in three days,
      what will be their condition on the fourth day? Prove by practice.

      "12. If a coach-wheel, 6-5/30 in diameter and 5-9/47 in
      circumference, makes 240-4/10 revolutions in a second, how many
      men will it take to do the same piece of work in ten days?

      "13. Find the greatest common measure of a quart bottle of Oxford
      port.

      "14. Find the value of a 'bob,' a 'tanner,' a 'joey,' and a
      'tizzy.'

      "15. Explain the common denominators 'brick,' 'trump,''spoon,'
     'muff,' and state what was the greatest common denominator in the
      last term.

      "16. Reduce two academical years to their lowest terms.

      "17. Reduce a Christ Church tuft to the level of a Teddy Hall man.

      "18. If a freshman A have any mouth _x_, and a bottle of wine _y_,
      show how many applications of _x_ to _y_ will place _y_+_y_ before
      _A_."

Mr. Pucker did not know what to make of such extraordinary and
unexpected questions. He blushed, attempted to write, fingered his
curls, tried to collect his faculties, and then appeared to give himself
over to despair; whereupon little Mr. Bouncer was seized with an
immoderate fit of coughing which had well nigh brought the farce to its
_denouement_.

"I'm afraid, young gentleman," said Mr. Four-in-hand Fosbrooke, as he
carelessly settled his white tie and bands, "I am afraid, Mr. Pucker,
that your learning is not yet up to the Brazenface standard. We are
particularly cautious about admitting any gentleman whose acquirements
are not of the highest order. But we will be as lenient to you as we are
able, and give you one more chance to retrieve yourself. We will try a
little _viva voce_, Mr. Pucker. Perhaps, sir, you will favour me with
your opinions on the Fourth Punic War, and will also give me a slight
sketch of the constitution of ancient Heliopolis."

Mr. Pucker waxed, if possible, redder and hotter than before, he gasped
like a fish out of water; and, like Dryden's prince, "unable to conceal
his pain," he

  "Sigh'd and look'd, sigh'd and look'd,
  Sigh'd and look'd, and sigh'd again."

But all was to no purpose: he was unable to frame an answer to Mr.
Fosbrooke's questions.

"Ah, sir," continued his tormentor, "I see that you will not do for us
yet awhile, and I am therefore under the painful necessity of rejecting
you. I should advise you, sir, to read hard for another twelvemonths,
and endeavour to master those subjects in which you have now failed.
For, a young man, Mr. Pucker, who knows nothing about the Fourth Punic
War, and the constitution of ancient Heliopolis, is quite unfit to be
enrolled among the members of such a learned college as Brazenface. Mr.
Pluckem quite coincides with me in this decision." (Here Mr. Verdant
Green gave a Burleigh nod.) "We feel very sorry for you, Mr. Pucker, and
also for your unfortunate family; but we recommend you to add to your
present stock of knowledge, and to keep those visiting-cards for another
twelvemonth." And Mr. Fosbrooke and our hero--disregarding poor Mr.
Pucker's entreaties that they would consider his pa and ma, and would
please to matriculate him this once, and he would read very hard, indeed
he would--turned to Mr. Bouncer and gave some private instructions,
which caused that gentleman immediately to vanish, and seek out Mr.
Robert Filcher.

Five minutes after, that excellent Scout met the dejected Mr. Pucker as
he was crossing the Quad on his way from Mr. Fosbrooke's rooms.

"Beg your pardon, sir," said Mr. Filcher, touching his forehead; for,
as Mr. Filcher, after the manner of his tribe, never was seen in a
head-covering, he was unable to raise his hat or cap; "beg your pardon,
sir! but was you a lookin' for the party as examines the young gents for
their matrickylation?"

"Eh?--no! I have just come from him," replied Mr. Pucker, dolefully.

[Illustration]

"Beg your pardon, sir," remarked Mr. Filcher, "but his rooms ain't that
way at all. Mr. Slowcoach, as is the party you _ought_ to have seed, has
_his_ rooms quite in a hopposite direction, sir; and he's the honly
party as examines the matrickylatin' gents."

"But I _have_ been examined," observed Mr. Pucker, with the air of a
plucked man; "and I am sorry to say that I was rejected, and"----

"I dessay, sir," interrupted Mr. Filcher; "but I think it's a 'oax,
sir!"

"A what?" stammered Mr. Pucker.

"A 'oax--a sell;" replied the Scout, confidentially. "You see, sir, I
think some of the gents have been makin' a little game of you, sir; they
often does with fresh parties like you, sir, that seem fresh and
hinnocent like; and I dessay they've been makin' believe to examine you,
sir, and a pretendin' that you wasn't clever enough. But they don't mean
no harm, sir; it's only their play, bless you!"

"Then," said Mr. Pucker, whose countenance had been gradually clearing
with every word the Scout spoke; "then I'm not really rejected, but have
still a chance of passing my examination?"

"Percisely so, sir," replied Mr. Filcher; "and--hexcuse me, sir, for a
hintin' of it to you,--but, if you would let me adwise you, sir, you
would