h Ado About Nothing_.

ABOUT a week had elapsed after the events which I have just recorded,
when one morning, shortly before my return to Cambridge, I received a
letter from Coleman, detailing the finale of the bellringing affair. It
ran as follows:--

~156~~"My Dear Frank--Doubtless you are, or ought to be, very anxious
to hear how I contrived to get out of the scrape into which you and
the Honourable George managed to inveigle me, having previously availed
yourselves of my innocence, and succeeded, through the seductive medium
of oysters and porter, in corrupting my morals, then leaving me, poor
victim! to bear the blame, and suffer the consequences, of our common
misdemeanour. However, mine is no pitiful spirit to be quelled by
misfortune, and, as dangers thickened around me, I bore up against them
bravely, like--like--(was it Julius Caesar or Coriolanus who did that
sort of thing?) but never mind--like _a_ Roman brick, we'll say; the
particular brick is quite immaterial, but I must beg you to believe the
likeness was something striking. To descend to particulars.--Hostilities
were commenced by that old ass, Mayor Dullmug, who took out a summons
against me for creating a riot and disturbance in the town, and the
first day the bench sat I was marched off by two policemen, and locked
up in a little dirty room, to keep cool till their worships were ready
to discuss me. Well, there I sat, kicking my heels, and chuckling over a
heart-rending little scene I had just gone through with my mother, whose
dread of the terrors of the law was greatly increased by the very vague
ideas she possessed of the extent of its powers. The punishment she had
settled in her own mind as likely to be awarded me was transportation,
and her farewell address was as follows: 'If they should be cruel enough
to order you to be transported for fourteen years, Freddy, my dear, I
shall try to persuade your father (though he's just like a savage North
American Indian about you) to get it changed "for life" instead, for
they always die of the yellow fever for the sharks to eat them, when
they've been over there three or four years; and four years are better
than fourteen, though bad's the best, and I'm a miserable woman. I
read all about it last week in one of Captain Marryat's books, and very
shocking I thought it,'--Having ventured to hint that if I was carried
off by the yellow fever at the end of a year or two, the length of my
sentence would not