ews are rarely satisfactory, or rather, one
rarely thinks of making them when the "score of the past" is in
our favor. Up to this moment it was clear I had gained little but
experience; I had started light, and I had acquired nothing, save a
somewhat worse opinion of the world and a greater degree of confidence
in myself. I had but one way of balancing my account with Fortune, which
was by asking myself, "Would I undo the past, if in my power? Would I
wish once more to be back in my 'father's mud edifice,' now digging a
drain, now drawing an indictment,--a kind of pastoral pettifogger, with
one foot in a potato furrow, and the other in petty sessions?" I stoutly
said, "No!" a thousand times "no!" to this question.

I could not ask myself as to my preference for a university career,
for my college life had concluded abruptly, in spite of me; but still,
during my town experiences I saw enough to leave me no regrets at
having quitted the muses. The life of a "skip," as the Trinity men have
it,--_vice_ gyp., for the Greek word signifying a "vulture,"--is only
removed by a thin sheet of silver paper from that of a cabin boy in a
collier; copious pummelling and short prog being the first two articles
of your warrant; while in some respects the marine has a natural
advantage over him on shore. A skip is invariably expected to invent
lies "at discretion" for his master's benefit, and is always thrashed
when they are either discovered or turn out adverse. On this point his
education is perfectly "Spartan;" but, unhappily too, he is expected to
be a perfect mirror of truth on all other occasions. This is somewhat
hard, inasmuch as it is only in a man's graduate course that he learns
to defend a paradox, and support by good reasons what he knows to be
false.

Again a "skip" never receives clothes, but is flogged at least once
a week for disorders in his dress, and for general untidiness of
appearance; this, too, is hard, since he has as little intercourse with
soap as he has with conic sections.

Thirdly, a good skip invariably obtains credit for his master at
"Foles's" chop-house; while, in his own proper capacity, he would not
get trust for a cheese-paring.

Fourthly, a skip is supposed to be born a valet, as some are born
poets,--to have an instinctive aptitude for all the details of things
he has never seen or heard of before; so that when he applies Warren's
patent to French leather boots, polishes silver with a Bath bric