y to plague him
and his fellows with lectures, to which he pays small attention, with
enforced chapels, which he sometimes dares to cut, and, with general
disciplinary regulations, to which he considers it advisable to
submit, though he is never inclined to admit their necessity. He
becomes a member of his college boat-club, and learns that one of
the objects of a regular attendance at College Chapel is, to enable
the freshman to practise keeping his back straight. Similarly, Latin
Dictionaries and Greek Lexicons are, necessarily, bulky, since,
otherwise, they would be useless as seats on which the budding oarsman
may improve the length of his swing in the privacy of his own rooms.
These rooms are all furnished on the same pattern. A table, a pedestal
desk for writing, half-a-dozen ordinary chairs, a basket arm-chair,
perhaps a sofa, some photographs of school-groups, family photographs
in frames, a cup or two, won at the school athletic sports, a football
cap, and a few prints of popular pictures, complete the furniture and
decorations of the average College rooms. Of course there are, even
amongst undergraduates, wealthy aesthetes, who furnish their rooms
extravagantly--but the Average Undergraduate is not one of them.

On the fifth of November the freshman sallies forth only to find,
with a sense of bitter disappointment, that the rows between Town and
Gown are things of the past. He will have discovered ere this that
undergraduate etiquette has ordained that while he wears a cap and
gown he must forswear gloves, and leave his umbrella at home, even
though the rain should pour down in torrents. All these ordinances he
observes strictly, though he can neither be "hauled" nor "gated" for
setting them at defiance. Towards the end of his first term he begins
to realise more accurately the joys and privileges of University life,
he has formed his set, and more or less found his level, he has become
a connoisseur of cheap wine, he has with pain and labour learned to
smoke, he has certainly exceeded his allowance, and he returns to his
home with the firm conviction that he knows a great deal of life. He
will terrify his mother with tales of proctorial misadventures, and
will excite the suspicions of his father by the new brilliance of his
attire. Indeed it is a curious fact that whatever the special pursuit
of the Average Undergraduate may be, and whatever may be the calling
and profession of his father, the two are general