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.
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