Max Pemberton

“ For the moment we shall do well to follow the freshman back at the dusk of evening to his cosy rooms, where the kettle is singing and the fire is blazing, and his "pots" catch the glow of the red light, and his piano awaits the "Tomtit," whose footsteps are soon to be heard lumbering up the stairs. In the unlikely case that our subject is a reading man, he may spend the hour between tea and chapel in the composition of ungrammatical prose or the production of uninspired verse. ”

“ Beyond this simple fare you get so much as you will from the kitchens of your own college, or of any college nearest to your rooms, paying the cook at the end of the term, or sooner, if your tutor arrives one day at the conclusion that you are going it. Wonderful men are these cooks, the husbanders of wonderful fortunes. Ours at Paul's would drive up to the kitchens regularly in a carriage and pair. Every voice was stilled as he came, every head was bent. "Hush, there is the cook!" was the cry.
You can breakfast in Cambridge of many things cheap and dear. ”

“ But let us have a look at the daily life of the freshman when at last he is left alone and the tutor has gone back, with his recollections, to the unwelcome obscurity of his village. The new life has much to charm, bringing as it does a sense of manhood new found and of freedom from the narrower control of home and people. It is possible that our freshman will not be in college during his first year, but will have rooms found for him in one of the registered lodging-houses near by. ”

“ Carry to this good fellow what news you would, speak to him of fame or fortune, flatter him or dispute with him, he would assume that bland smile and invite you to "get out." It is recorded that such a habit of speech made him a stranger for ever to the friendship of Corcoran, the little tutor of Paul's, who, when Lurcher was a freshman, took to himself the unnecessary task of lecturing upon Seneca. Corcoran, who was the smallest and the most conceited man in the 'Varsity, loved to linger upon the line, "An avenging God closely follows the haughty." ”

“ Pianos too must not be played after ten of the clock, so that often a little musical which is very much at home, will witness strange conversations. Let us imagine a room lighted by many candles, a bright red flame of fire leaping in the grate, a table bearing ornament of many bottles and spirit decanters, a group of men gathered about a piano, their occupation that of shrieking with resonant voices the sweet old song, "And her golden hair was hanging down her back!" To this room enters Hawks, the servant of the dean. ”

“ Breakfast being done, even a boating "fresher" may pause a moment to remember that he was sent to Cambridge with other than purely aquatic ideas. He may, over his morning paper and his pipe, recall the fact that his senior tutor—who with his junior and the dean practically governs the college—will shortly lecture upon the Second Book of the Aeneid, and that afterwards a person, big in mathematics, is to trouble himself needlessly about the exertions of two men and a boy who, for some reason best known to the author of the "Arithmetic," are about to run from London to Yarmouth. ”

“ The freshman has not been long a member of the University before the daily curriculum becomes familiar to him. He is quick to learn that the buttery of his college sends every morning to his rooms an allowance of milk, and bread and butter, ample for the needs of the common day. ”

“ You made your own coffee, of course, and might acquire a reputation in the art. Indeed Solomon, our little one-eyed friend, who at nineteen was as old in the cult of Bohemia as many a man of forty, owed all his supremacy and his brilliant career to his skill in manipulating the coffee-pot and in warming Burgundy to a nice temperature. Criticise him as you would, complain that he could talk about nothing but French novels, abuse him for swinging out of the boat at bow—your fellow gossip would answer always, "Yes; but he can make coffee!" With this reputation he went forth to fight the world. ”

“ A rough-haired, grim and fierce-looking man he was, who heard the music of the "sweetest song in the rhythm of r to the nth, and asked of life nothing more than a system in which x and his own name should go thundering down the ages. ”

“ These things are exceptions however; and it must be said unhesitatingly that the services of college chapels are conducted with a dignity and devotion rarely marred by the exuberance of youthful spirits. When chapel is done our freshman betakes himself to Hall where, for a sum varying between 1s. 11d. and 2s. 1d., he gets an excellent plain dinner and washes it down with unrivalled audit from the buttery. Unless he be entertaining friends or the night be a feast, it is not good form for him to drink wine ”

“ He had repeated it three times on one October morning when the Lurcher intervened. "Get out!" said he unconsciously. The two were strangers from that moment.
•••••
Longfellow, when writing "Hyperion," was moved to raptures upon the vocal powers of man. "Oh, how wonderful is the human voice!" he says. I never read this line but I recall the voice of the Lurcher when first I heard it in the court of Paul's college. We were coming out of Hall, two hundred coffeeless men, when we espied this giant freshman high above the throng of an admiring circle of his kind. ”

“ In this den the first of the merry three years to come will be spent; here friendships, to end with death perchance, or perchance to be broken at the outset of the sterner life, will be begun; here many a rattling breakfast will be given ”