fist fights. To be "gated"
was to be confined to college and to be "rusticated" was to be
suspended from college.

A "wine" is the nineteenth century equivalent of a student's beer
and pizza party, though it seems to have been paid for entirely
out of the pocket of the host. It is also a form of student
networking, wherein they build relationships useful for their
future business, professional or social life. German university
students joined a Kadet Korps, which was somewhat like a
combination of a modern day fraternity and Officer's Training
Corps, but no such equivalent seems to have been at Oxford.
Instead there was an academic set called the "reading men" which
buckled down to the books, and a set of "fast men" who lived the
dissipated high life of drinking, gambling, women and riding fast
horses. The fast set, though they were gentleman commoners and
not titled nobility, usually were from wealthy families, and
often ran up large bills with the local tradesmen, called "going
tick", which could go unpaid for quite a long time.

In Chapter 14 the author mentions Big Ben, but this is not the
clock tower bell in London, which at the time of writing had not
yet been rung; instead this is Benjamin Caunt, the bare-knuckle
boxer who defeated William Thompson in 75 rounds to become
Heavyweight Champion of England in 1838. The bell may possibly
have been named after him.

It should be remembered that at the time this story was written,
the dangers of tobacco smoke were mostly unknown, and cigars,
cheroots and pipes were quite commonly used, though the cigarette
had not come into use yet. Tobacco, often called weed, was only
discouraged during physical training, thus at one point in
Chapter 15 Tom recommends smoking to Hardy for an almost
therapeutic purpose.

In Chapter 17 the author imagines a flying machine, though at the
time of writing only balloons had ever carried men aloft. He
imagines it something like a carriage equipped to carry
passengers, with the most comfortable carriage type C-springs,
steam powered, and faster than the latest trains, which at that
time went 40 miles per hour, the fastest speed that anyone had
ever achieved.

The author mentions Tractarians and Germanizers. The Tractarians
were a group of Oxford dons who, in the 1840s, wrote a series of
tracts, aimed at proposing some changes to the theological system
of the Anglican Church. Germanizers proposed some changes more
along the lines of