This is a society that has existed in the town of Cambridge for ages,
whose functions consist in _wearing the linen of the students who
lodge in their houses after it has been cast off for the laundress_.
This same individual, however, had a taste for higher game, and one of
the students, who had rooms in his house, being called to London for a
few days, returning rather unexpectedly, actually found mine host at
the head of the table, in his sitting-room, surrounded by some twenty
_snobs_, his friends. Our gownsman very properly resented his
impertinence, took him by the collar and waist, and, in the language
of that fine old song, goose-a-goose-a-gander, "_threw him down
stairs_." The rest of the party prudently followed at this hint,
leaving the table covered with the remains of sundry bottles of wine
and a rich dessert. Thus the affair terminated at that time: but our
gownsman being a man of fortune, and one of those accustomed,
therefore, to treat his brother students, his friends, sumptuously
too, went two or three days after, to his fruiterer's, to order