College! how different from school! Never believe a great, broad-faced,
beetle-browed Spoon, when he tells you, with a sigh that would upset a
schooner, that the happiest days of a man's life are those he spends at
school. Does he forget the small bed-room occupied by eighteen boys, the
pump you had to run to on Sunday mornings, when decency and the usher
commanded you to wash? Is he oblivious of the blue chalk and water they
flooded your bowels with at breakfast, and called it milk? Has he lost
the remembrance of the Yorkshire pudding, vulgarly called choke-dog, of
which you were obliged to eat a pound before you were allowed a slice
of beef, and of which, if you swallowed half that quantity, you thought
cooks and oxen mere works of supererogation, and totally useless on the
face of the earth? Has the fool lost all recollection of the prayers in
yon cold, wet, clay-floored cellar, proudly denominated the chapel? has
he forgot the cuffs from the senior boys, the pinches from the second
master? and, _in fine_, has he forgot the press at the end of the
school-room, where a cart-load of birch was deposited at the beginning
of every half year, and not a twig left to tickle a mouse with, long
before the end of it? He talks of freedom from care--what a negative
kind of happiness! Let him cut off his hand, he will never hurt his
nails. Let him enclose an order for all his money even unto us, and no
more will he be troubled with cares about the Stocks--no more will he be
teased with calculations on the price of grain. All that raving about
school-boys is perfect nonsense--it is the most miserable period of a
human being's life. Poor, shivering, trembling, kicked, buffetted,
thumped, and starved little mortals! We never see a large school but we
feel inclined to shoot them all, masters, ushers, and door-keepers
included, merely to put them out of pain.
But at College, how different!--_There_, a man begins to feel that it is
a matter of total indifference to him whether he sit on a hard wooden
bench, or a soft stuffed chair; _there_, the short coat is discarded,
and he stalks about with the air of a three-tailed bashaw, as his own
two, generally, at first, are prolonged a little below the knee;
_there_, his penny tart, which he bought on Saturdays at the door of the
school, is exchanged for a dessert from Golding's; his beer, which he
occasionally imbibed at the little pot-house, two miles beyond the
school bounds, is exchanged for his wine from Butler's.--Books from
Talboy's, the most enterprising of bibliopoles, supply the place of the
tattered Dictionary he brought to the University, which, after being
stolen when new, and passing, by the same process, through twenty hands,
is at last, when fluttering in its last leaves, restolen by the original
proprietor, who fancies he has made a very profitable "nibble." The trot
he used to enjoy by stealth on the butcher's broken-kneed pony, is
succeeded now by a gallop on a steed of Quartermain's; and he is
delighted to find that horse and owner strive which shall be the
softest-mouthed and gentlest charger. The dandy mare, we suppose, has
many long years ago made fat the great-grandfathers of the present race
of dogs; and old Scroggins, we imagine, has been trod to pieces in boots
and shoes, the very memory of which departed long, long before they were
paid for. Of old Scroggins--as Dr. Johnson says--and of his virtues, let
us indulge ourself in the recollection. Though not formed in the finest
mould, or endowed with the extremity of swiftness, his pace was sure and
steady--equal to Hannibal in endurance of fatigue; and, like that
celebrated commander, his aspect was rendered peculiarly fierce and
striking by a blemish in his eye; not ignorant of the way to Woodstock
was the wall-eyed veteran; not unacquainted with the covers at Ditchley;
not unaccustomed to the walls at Hethrop: but Dandy and Scroggins have
padded the hoof from this terrestrial and unstable world--peace to their
manes!--_Blackwood's Magazine._
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