Max Pemberton

“ The dean stood thunderstruck, his veins began to swell, he rocked to and fro upon his great heels. There above him was a man leaning out of the window, and gesticulating so wildly that a hasty judgment might have deemed him guilty of an attempt to swim in the air. Closer observation would have revealed the fact that the window had been shut down upon the youth from behind, thus leaving him exposed to the ocular fury of the dean, while the frame pressed heavily upon that spot where, as Ingoldsby has told us, the tail joins on to the small of the back. ”

“ The touch of her hand thrills him in fancy until his grip of the poker is tenacious and unyielding, and he batters the coal as though it stood between the vision and the dreamer. So the sparks fly up, and each of them becomes for him a nugget of the gold he lacks ”

“ So entirely does his dreaming absorb him that he has an arm about the back of a chair, while the poker is flourished to the immediate danger of his glass. Heavenward the imagination carries him, but to earth he comes at last, and without dignity. ”

“ Regularly when October came round and sixty freshmen trooped into chapel for morning service, you knew that the old act was to be played; you awaited the unrestrainable ripple of laughter as a man may wait for the bell of a clock. ”

“ Yet withal we had a great affection for the Dean of Paul's, who knew how to be the friend of men and shared with the tutors the confidence and esteem of every man whose privilege it was to be guided of them. Many a time and oft have I seen our dean carry himself with amazing courage in the midst of turbulence and that which bordered upon a petty riot. ”

“ His thoughts have traversed many a landscape by this time and have come to rest in the fair gardens of Oxford. He beholds a woman, young and sweet and winning, the mistress of the garden of his dreams. ”

“ Despite the necessary and indispensable dignities of office, many Cambridge dons are unquestionably human. The undergraduate, accustomed to regard all dons as a compound of silk and spectacles and Greek irregular verbs, accepts this conclusion with hesitation. Yon fellow, for instance, whom we meet coming out of the senate house when the rest of the 'Varsity is on its way to the footer field or to the "ditch"—is there anything possibly human about him. The strings of his master's gown flutter on the warm south wind ”

“ Not that one would say anything against ideals—as ideals—it is their application which is troublesome. I remember a famous tradition of a Dean of John's who announced, upon assumption of office, that he intended to stamp out many things—but particularly fireworks. There was no reason why the good man should not have gone through life with credit, doing as he would have been done by ”

“ He exacted a ready humility from all the servants of the college, and was quick to punish the pride of those whom the catechism taught him were his inferiors. One day, as the tradition goes, he chanced to see the door of Jesus Chapel open at an unusual hour, and peeping in, he observed a workman high up on a scaffold and busy cleaning the roof. Being ignorant of the order for any such undertaking the outraged dean at once called the fellow to him.
"Working-man," he exclaimed solemnly, "come here!" ”

“ This good man was wont to sit long in the common-room seeing the decanter out. Often we met him at late hours furtively descending the great oak staircase, and we shook our heads when we observed how close was the friendship between him and the banister. One night, about eleven o'clock, we smuggled three cocks, all alive and crowing, into Paul's, and turned them upon this staircase at the moment when we observed our port-loving fellow in the act of leaving the common-room. ”

“ I am the Dean of Jesus College, Cambridge, and I say that I shall take pictures here!"
"Sir," retorted the little man, while he gave the camera a kick and sent it flying, "I am the Dean of Christchurch, Oxford, and I say that you shall not take pictures here!"
••••
Undergraduates, unripe though their judgment of men and things may be, are very quick in estimating the worth and the will of those set above them. The schoolmaster don is particularly abhorrent to them. They resent grandmotherly legislation but will repay confidence generously. ”