DERN PYTHAGOREAN."

COLLEGE THEATRICALS

[_MAGA._ DECEMBER 1843.]

It wanted but two or three weeks to the Christmas vacation (alas! how
many years ago!) and we, the worshipful society of undergraduates of
---- College, Oxford, were beginning to get tired of the eternal round
of supper-parties which usually marked the close of our winter's
campaign, and ready to hail with delight any proposition that had the
charm of novelty. A three weeks' frost had effectually stopped the
hunting; all the best tandem-leaders were completely screwed; the
freshmen had been "larked" till they were grown as cunning as magpies;
and the Dean had set up a divinity lecture at two o'clock, and published
a stringent proclamation against rows in the Quad. It was, in short,
during a particularly uninteresting state of things, with the snow
falling lazily upon the grey roofs and silent quadrangle, that some
half-dozen of us had congregated in Bob Thornhill's rooms, to get over
the time between lunch and dinner with as little trouble to our mental
and corporeal faculties as possible. Those among us who had been for the
last three months promising to themselves to begin to read "next week,"
had now put off that too easy creditor, conscience, till "next term."
One alone had settled his engagements of that nature, or, in the
language of his "_Testamur_"--the prettiest bit of Latin, he declared,
that he ever saw--"_satisfecit examinatoribus_." Unquestionably, in his
case, the examiners must have had the rare virtue of being very easily
satisfied. In fact, Mr Savile's discharge of his educational engagements
was rather a sort of "whitewashing" than a payment in full. His passing
was what is technically called a "shave," a metaphor alluding to that
intellectual density which finds it difficult to squeeze through the
narrow portal which admits to the privileges of a Bachelor of Arts. As
Mr S. himself, being a sporting man, described it, it was "a very close
run indeed;" not that he considered that circumstance to derogate in any
way from his victory; he was rather inclined to consider, that, having
shown the field of examiners capital sport, and fairly got away from
them in the end without the loss of his brush, his examination had been
one of the very best runs of the season. In virtue whereof he was now
mounted on the arm of an easy-chair, with a long chibouque, which became
the gravity of an incipient bachelor better than a cigar, and took up