even for politeness. Of course, to my assertion there are exceptions, where some, from the nature of the service, have a little spice of the Trunnion of old, and are more fitted to command a ship-of-war than to enter the drawing-room. This fuss then about fagging, I certainly consider to be something similar to the name of one of our old English comedies," Much Ado about Nothing." I have here diverged a little from my entrance into college, which was the beginning of a new and different sort of life to what is experienced at the dame's. There her watchful eye kept tolerably good order; but when once entered into long-chamber, the captain is the arbiter of your happiness or otherwise, though the other six-form boys, as well as the liberty boys (like lieutenants and middies in a ship), have great power over the lower boys; yet make the captain your friend, nothing is to be feared. A few words in this place respecting long-chamber. From what I can now recollect, I should think that it was about a hundred and eighty feet long, though I may not be quite correct in the length. On each side a range of old oaken bedsteads (the tenants for centuries of this ancient dormitory), no sacking and no curtains, and between every bedstead a high desk, with a cupboard under, for each boy. This desk contains all that they have (mugs, mousetraps, and all other groceries) or need require. The leaf of a book torn off, doubled, and a hole cut in the centre, forms the only candlestick which the colleger has: should he wish to read in bed, the candle is removed from the pasteboard candlestick, and claims affinity with the back of the old bedstead, by being stuck against it. Should the drowsy god overtake the boy in his nocturnal study in bed, and his candle burn down to the wood, no harm will accrue, being pretty well striped with charcoal, evidences of the incombustible nature of the old oak, and he will not be long before he awakes from the unpleasant smell of the wood, or perhaps what is more likely, by a good tweak of the nose from his next-door neighbour. A coarse cloth gown is the peculiar badge and external form of being of a colleger. Woe unto the boy that ever enters college with a bad temper; be it good or bad, it will at first be tried in all manner of ways, disagreeable to those who have not been accustomed to rough usage; by degrees it will wear off, and I, as having been one who saw some little of longchamber tricks, will have the ingenuousness to own (excepting the period when I was in Carter's chamber) that I never partook of more happiness than when lying on my hard wooden bedstead, fatigued with various sports, perhaps from a little skirmishing with some oppidans at hoop, a favourite and healthy sport in the autumn and winter season, in the school-yard and cloisters; and in the exercise of which some pretty hard blows arise, and when opposed to each other, which is always the case, the colleger, rather presumptuously, considers himself equal to at least three oppidans, something like John Bull's estimate of his opposite neighbours' fighting : qualities, though perhaps very wrongfully. It must be owned that the freaks of the upper boys are somewhat annoying. Many and many is the time, when writing at my desk, and my exercise all but prepared for the scrutiny of the head-master on the following morning, that a bolster, shaken down hard to one end, and urged with a skilful hand, has sent my poor candlestick flying on to my bed, and given to my rug the benefit of its tallowy odour and in addition to this, my ink bottle, at that moment also overthrown by the same irresistible weapon, making certain inroads of the river Niger over my luckless exercise, equally as uncertain of its source—or perhaps should a boy be amusing himself after he is locked up at half past eight, with a walk up and down chamber, nescio quid meditans nugarum, et totus in illis, he finds his head come in contact with the old oaken floor in a most sudden and unexpected manner. This is effected by one of the upper boys stealing from off one of the bedsteads on which he has been sitting (no chairs be it known), and the moment the other has passed on he comes behind his victim, and with one fell swoop of the bolster on the heels, down he goes. As to complaining, that was out of the question-it was the chance of war. But this was trifling when compared with others which I have known some poor fellows undergo, and what was very far from agreeable to the sense of feeling; that of being in the middle of the night awakened by finding a rope fastened to your great toe, and having been assisted by some officious friend out of bed in the dark, and at the same time kept by him from falling, run up, as the sailor would term it, the whole length of the long chamber and back again, and then thrown on your bed, the noose whipped off, and then to sleep with what appetite you may. You afterwards perceive, when left to your meditations, that the rope has been too fond of your toe, and a painful soreness follows your nocturnal wandering. That ordeal I had the good fortune to escape, though I was aware that I was booked for it. If a whispering was heard after all the lights were put out, it was then pretty certain that something was afloat: and as it was utterly impossible to know who was to suffer, the only way, supposing it was to be yourself, was to move quietly out of bed, put your rug up to the bolster as if you had not been there, and then creep under three or four bedsteads at a distance from your own, and there lie perdu, until the tyranny be overpast. Another species of fun (like the log to the frogs, fun on one side and death to the other) or kick-shin annoyance, was put into practice on your entrance to a particular part of the school, equally as agreeable to the tiros as Neptune's visit to those who had never before crossed the line-I mean what is termed being put into play. I will explain it. Around one of the large fires in the long chamber two bedsteads are placed close together on each side, and two at the end, making a tolerably sized inclosure. The boy who is put into play is placed in one corner, next to the captain, a certain number of the élite or head boys being seated on the bedstead. At a given signal the captain starts him with a kick of no slight nature, a posteriori, which generally sends him to the opposite side; from thence he makes a return, quite as expeditiously: backwards and forwards he goes, like a shuttlecock-with this difference though, that the one is composed of cork and feathers and no feeling, and he is made of flesh and blood, being very sensitive. After a reasonable, or to speak more correctly, unreasonable time, when he has been pretty well bandied about, with some few bruises beginning to make their appearance, he is permitted to make his way through the hostile phalanx, and clear the bedsteads, leaving his place to be taken by another, who has been a shivering spectator of number one's amusement: something in the style of a Portuguese execution of traitors, where each has to await the death of the other, and to be the unwilling spectator of their sufferings. This is denominated play, though the next morning a certain stiffness generally accompanies the waking hours. But it is only once, soon over, soon forgotten-though previous to it often thought of with dread; and the worst of it is, that unlike to a freshman's entrance to Neptune's dominions (who can be appeased by a gallon of rum), here there is no remission, no bribery allowed, no outward semblance of a grampounder, all are intent on giving him a benefit. Still with all these essentials necessary to your degree as a colleger, I would prefer that life, had I the option as a boy, to that of the oppidan; though both are agreeable, still there is more of life in the former. TO C. DICKENS, ESQ. ON HIS DEPARTURE FOR AMERICA. PSHAW! away with leaf and berry, Here's success to all his antics, And his passage be as clever As the best among his works. December 31, 1841. T. H. PHINEAS QUIDDY; OR, SHEER INDUSTRY. BY JOHN POOLE, ESQ. AUTHOR OF "PAUL PRY," &c. CHAP. XX. OUR HIERO ASSUMES A NEW AND MORE ELEVATED POSITION IN SOCIETY -BECOMES ACQUAINTED WITH A LADY WHO, SPITE OF PRESENT APPEARANCES, MAY, PROBABLY, CONTRIBUTE TO A VERY IMPORTANT CHANGE IN HIS CONDITION. NATURE is an obstinate old lady who will have her own way: she will not easily permit her intentions to be frustrated. True, you may catch her napping, and play her a trick once; but, that discovered, she will not allow you to improve your advantage. A mule is neither all horse nor all donkey, but-Nature is still more obstinate than the hybrid.* You cannot, by any process of cultivation with which we are at present acquainted, convert potatoes into pine-apples; nor induce red cabbages to become roses; nor can you-and this illustration is more to our purpose-nor can you by any known contrivance, physical, artistical, or mechanical, produce a silken purse from the ear of a mother of little pigs. We might have conveyed this illustration in form more compact by simply adopting the well-known proverb, "You can't make a silken purse out of a sow's ear;" but, as we hold it to be vastly ungenteel to quote a popular saying (except, indeed, in some foreign language, dead or alive) we prefer rather to be circumlocutory than defile our page by the use of it. The new position, then, which wealth entitled our hero to assume, was that of gentleman; but as, by force of Nature, he had been a scrubby, selfish, low-minded, low-principled shopboy, and as these characteristics abided by him upwards in his career, so was he now a scrubby, selfish, low-minded, low-principled gentleman.-Gentleman? -But we are not accountable for the abuse or the misapplication of terms we must take them as we find them current: he was a man of wealth, ergo It now was but a matter of course that Quiddy's society should be much * When Louis XVIII. was in exile at Holyrood, his Majesty allowed himself to be kidnapped by the manager of the Edinburgh playhouse (at that time not quite on a par, perhaps, with the Théâtre Français) to honour with his presence the performance of a tragedy. On the following morning the manager waited upon the King, and, thanking him for his gracious condescension, expressed his hope that his Majesty had been pleased with the entertainments. "O charmant !-delightful!-beautiful, very!" replied Louis, as in common civility he was bound to do. "Then," said the manager, night for your next visit." "I may hope your Majesty will condescend to name a "No-no," hastily replied the King; "once of such fun is enough." So says Nature in like instances with that which we have cited:" Once of such fun is enough." courted. His company was eagerly sought after by the highest and most distinguished families in his neighbourhood; by some even whose chiefs enjoyed the honour of being common-councilmen. Scarcely was a dinner-party given to which he was not invited. By families where the daughters had much to expect from their fathers he was invited sometimes; where little, often; where nothing, still oftener. By the mothers of the first class he was considered to be far from ugly, and not so very disagreeable; by class 2, quite handsome enough for a man- -(" But not for a woman," as one sly girl replied)—and vastly pleasant; whilst the mammas, No. 3, vowed and protested he was positively charming. All this, carefully reported to Quiddy, could not but be flattering to him. But although he swallowed their compliments as freely as he did their dinners, the daughters were (to use his own expression) at a discount. As well might you hope to induce a wary old jack to quit its watery home by the offer of a bare, unbaited hook, as to trepan him into matrimony with a dowerless daughter. In the meantime he continued to accept their dinners, for, as he prudently considered, by that he saved expense; and being a bachelor, without an establishment, he was absolved from the necessity of paying them in kind. To do him justice, however, he was continually hinting at the delight it would be to him to return the hospitalities of his friends if ever he should marry; besides which, he never failed to present the mammas and grown-up daughters with a tooth-brush each on their respective birth-days (a queer present, but such was the FACT); whilst to the younger children, when they were served up with the dessert, he was liberal almost to profusion in bestowing fruit, cakes, and sweetmeats-from their parents' tables. With Herod's "favourite aversions," therefore, he was deservedly popular. Not so with that proverbially dissatisfied and ungrateful tribe, the servants. These "base ingrates" (to use a melodramatic phrase) were wont to speak of him 66 as that stingy hound," although he made it a rule to give to one servant in each family he dined with five-and-twenty times in the year, half-a-crown at Christmas. He made it a rule, also (such was his delicacy!) to present his donation with so studied an attempt at concealment, that the act was certain to be observed by one or other of the family, and reported accordingly. Yet had he for some time past resolved upon marrying, if he could find any ten thousand pounds who should be willing to have him; nor was it long ere he had the good fortune to discover what he sought. To the ten thousand pounds to which he paid his addresses, was appended Miss Honoria St. Egremont, a—a maiden lady. But wherefore hesitate? for we believe that, according to custom, we are perfectly in order in so describing her, she being two-and-thirty, and unmarried. Some, indeed, might have used a term less considerate. And hence arises a question that has always perplexed us; for though a married woman of about that age is considered to be a young woman, yet, for some reason or other, of which we have not the most remote idea, one unmarried is always looked upon as an Hold rather than pursue the point, we will abide by the perilous responsibility of describing a lady who is detected in the fact of being unmarried at thirty-two, as a maiden lady. About fourteen years prior to the period which we are now treating |