_This piece and the ten that follow it date from Butler’s undergraduate
days_. _They were preserved by the late Canon Joseph McCormick_, _who
was Butler’s contemporary at Cambridge and knew him well_.
_In a letter to_ THE TIMES, _published_ 27 _June_, 1902, _shortly after
Butler’s death_, _Canon McCormick gave some interesting details of
Butler’s Cambridge days_. “_I have in my possession_,” _he wrote_,
“_some of the skits with which he amused himself and some of his personal
friends_. _Perhaps the skit professed to be a translation from
Thucydides_, _inimitable in its way_, _applied to Johnians in their
successes or defeats on the river_, _or it was the_ ‘_Prospectus of the
Great Split Society_,’ _attacking those who wished to form narrow or
domineering parties in the College_, _or it was a very striking poem on
Napoleon in St. Helena_, _or it was a play dealing with a visit to the
Paris Exhibition_, _which he sent to_ PUNCH, _and which_, _strange to
say_, _the editor never inserted_, _or it was an examination paper set to
a gyp of a most amusing and clever character_.” _One at least of the
pieces mentioned by Canon McCormick has unfortunately disappeared_.
_Those that have survived are here published for what they are worth_.
_There is no necessity to apologise for their faults and deficiencies_,
_which do not_, _I think_, _obscure their value as documents illustrating
the development of that gift of irony which Butler was afterwards to
wield with such brilliant mastery_. ‘_Napoleon at St. Helena_’ _and_
‘_The Shield of Achilles_’ _have already appeared in_ THE EAGLE,
_December_, 1902; _the_ “_Translation from Herodotus_,” “_The Shield of
Achilles_,” “_The Two Deans II_,” _and_ “_On the Italian Priesthood_,”
_in_ THE NOTE-BOOKS OF SAMUEL BUTLER; _the_ “_Prospectus of the Great
Split Society_” _and_ “_A Skit on Examinations_” _in_ THE EAGLE, _June_,
1913.
AND the Johnians practise their tub in the following manner: They select
eight of the most serviceable freshmen and put these into a boat, and to
each one of them they give an oar; and having told them to look at the
backs of the men before them they make them bend forward as far as they
can and at the same moment, and having put the end of the oar into the
water pull it back again in to them about the bottom of the ribs; and if
any of them does not do this or looks about him away from the back of the
man before him they curse him in the most terrible manner, but if he does
what he is bidden they immediately cry out:
“Well pulled, number so-and-so.”
For they do not call them by their names but by certain numbers, each man
of them having a number allotted to him in accordance with his place in
the boat, and the first man they call stroke, but the last man bow; and
when they have done this for about fifty miles they come home again, and
the rate they travel at is about twenty-five miles an hour; and let no
one think that this is too great a rate, for I could say many other
wonderful things in addition concerning the rowing of the Johnians, but
if a man wishes to know these things he must go and examine them himself.
But when they have done they contrive some such a device as this, for
they make them run many miles along the side of the river in order that
they may accustom them to great fatigue, and many of them being
distressed in this way fall down and die, but those who survive become
very strong, and receive gifts of cups from the others; and after the
revolution of a year they have great races with their boats against those
of the surrounding islanders, but the Johnians, both owing to the
carefulness of the training and a natural disposition for rowing, are
always victorious. In this way then the Johnians, I say, practise their
tub.