ve
up here as I like to live. I like hunting and driving, and
drawing badgers, and playing cards, and good wine and cigars.
They hunt and drive, and keep dogs and good cellars, and will
play unlimited loo or Van John as long as I please."

"But I know you get very sick of all that often, for I've heard
you say as much half-a-dozen times in the little time I've been
here."

"Why, you don't want to deny me the Briton's privilege of
grumbling, do you?" said Drysdale, as he flung his legs up on the
sofa, crossing one over the other as he lounged on his back--his
favorite attitude; "but suppose I am getting tired of it
all--which I am not--what do you purpose as a substitute?"

"Take to boating. I know you could be in the first boat if you
liked; I heard them say so at Smith's wine the other night."

"But what's to prevent my getting just as tired of that? Besides,
it's such a grind. And then there's the bore of changing all
one's habits."

"Yes, but it's such splendid hard work," said Tom, who was bent
on making a convert of his friend.

"Just so; and that's just what I don't want; the 'books and work
and healthful play' line don't suit my complaint. No, as my uncle
says, 'a young fellow must sow his wild oats,' and Oxford seems a
place especially set apart by Providence for that operation."

In all the wild range of accepted British maxims there is none,
take it for all in all, more thoroughly abominable than this one,
as to the sowing of wild oats. Look at it on what side you will,
and you can make nothing but a devil's maxim of it. What a
man--be he young, old, or middle-aged--sows, _that_, and nothing
else shall he reap. The one only thing to do with wild oats, is
to put them carefully into the hottest part of the fire, and get
them burnt to dust, every seed of them. If you sow them no matter
in what ground, up they will come, with long tough roots like
couch grass, and luxuriant stalks and leaves, as sure as there is
a sun in heaven--a crop which it turns one's heart cold to think
of. The devil, too, whose special crop they are, will see that
they thrive, and you, and nobody else, will have to reap them;
and no common reaping will get them out of the soil, which must
be dug down deep again and again. Well for you if with all your
care you can make the ground sweet again by your dying day. "Boys
will be boys" is not much better, but that has a true side to it;
but this encouragement to the sowing of wild oats