Max Pemberton

“ Soon a vast mob pressed on the terrified little man—the rare swimmer in that tremendous human sea. It shouted, danced, crowed with joy. From room to room and court to court the great news spread, "They have bagged 'Stony's cap in the Market Place!" Nearly an hour passed before the excited, yelping throngs bore the little man, shoulder high, to the gates of his college and there took their leave of him with three times three. It was positively his last appearance in the rôle of a dogless proctor. ”

“ SOULS of good Americans have been accounted for in a latter-day proverb, but I have yet to learn that the spirit of the virtuous proctor has received the same attention. Possibly it is the opinion of mankind in general, and of the undergraduate in particular, that the proctor has no soul, or, having one, is predestined to shades wherein the smoke is not the smoke of the Havannah, nor the music the dulcet strain of the "Circus Girl." ”

“ Much as vulgar curiosity promotes the desire to behold a proctor, the freshman may spend weeks in Cambridge and yet never see one. People assure him that his anxiety will be less by-and-bye; but that does not satisfy a craving to behold in the flesh those janissaries of 'Varsity law who are potent to strike terror even into the heart of a ripened student. ”

“ It is that of a man in a black morning coat and a tall silk hat. The man has a vulgar face and does not always pay tribute to the aspirates. He is a college servant, in fact, a butler or gyp promoted to the honours of the bulldog's state during his master's term of office. And now he stands before the amazed freshman proffering his meek request—
"The proctor would like to speak to you, sir."
The freshman takes his cigar out of his mouth, and is conscious of a curious sensation. Is this, then, the moment he has looked for? Has a proctor really come down to earth? ”

“ Happily for the dignity of the office, it is not often that a proctor makes himself publicly ridiculous. I remember but two cases of the kind during my student days, the same man serving for hero on each occasion. He was a little fellow, a proctor of John's, who managed to earn conspicuous unpopularity for himself by methods of work which even professors pronounced unsportsmanlike. ”

“ To resist violence, says Tacitus, is implanted in the nature of man. The same spirit animating youth, we may suppose, contrives that instinctive hostility with which even the freshman regards the proctor. From his first day at Cambridge the undergraduate is taught that no friendship is possible between him and the gentleman in bands who goes forth by night seeking whom he may fine. There is, indeed, something not to be forgotten in your first meeting with a proctor. ”

“ They have told him before this that a proctor is a don and nothing more—a human, palpable, flesh-and-blood don appointed by the vice-chancellor to patrol the streets of Cambridge for one year, and to snap up all the unconsidered trifles in the way of six-and-eights possible during the time. ”

“ The childish employments of leisurely stockbrokers have been a source of amusement to strangers for some generations, but even a stockbroker spinning a peg-top is not so infantile a spectacle as the undergraduate in the moment of fashions and of new toys. ”

“ Once only within the last twenty years has there been an approach to a riot of sufficient respectability to rub shoulders for a moment with the greater achievements of the past. That, if my memory does not fail me, was in the autumn of the year 1881, when a mob of angry men, goaded by an attack upon a popular restaurant, set off at eleven o'clock on the night of November 5 to visit a wild beast show then encamped on Jesus Piece. ”

“ The bulldog, meanwhile, had appeared upon the scene again, the mere wreck of a man, panting, swearing, rolling with his efforts. Seeking to follow a tall undergraduate in a low hat, he never even looked at Black as he ran by him, but doubled the corner again and went flying on. When we saw him ten minutes later he was sitting in the gutter with his collar, hat, and tie beside him, and the expression of the ultimate agony upon his face.
••••
These are strong measures, to be used only by a man of strong limbs. The weaker man pays up like a lamb ”

“ They tell many stories in Cambridge of strangers who have amused themselves by the rather threadbare joke of suffering themselves to be caught by bulldogs and brought before the proctor, to that official's discomfiture. ”

“ As for their brethren who can see a cigarette when it is yet a long way off, lucky for them that oblivion ultimately claims them. Ten years ago, perchance, they were flourishing dons and deans; to-day, it may be, they proctorise the heathen in far countries, and sorrow lies heavy upon their souls because the black man comes to their lectures with a red flannel waistcoat for his academicals. ”

“ In his place was a dashing girl, powdered, rouged, and splendidly attired—it may be a little unclassical in her phrases. Tradition—lying tradition, of course—declares that the good man shed real tears before he could persuade the lady to forsake the beautiful courts of his college. ”

“ The milk of human kindness is not wasted even upon an undergraduate. I remember a man who was made the lasting champion of the great "O.B." of King's by a pretty act of vengeance which only a generous mind could have conceived. The man in question had been lined six-and-eightpence as compensation to the University chest for the enormity of smoking a cigarette in the streets of Cambridge. The proctor who apprehended the villain was Mr. ”

“ She did so, being careful to change her dress and to set out all her charms to perfection before paying such a novel visit. The astonishment of the excellent cleric is to be imagined when "Mr. Paton, of Emmanuel," was announced and ushered into his room. ”