rtners were positively
heart-rending, and the blank faces of the deserted billiard-marker and
solitary livery-stable 'groom' haunt me to this day.

I had been endeavouring by hard reading, for the last three months, to
work up the arrears of three years of college idleness, when my evil
genius himself, in the likeness of George Gordon of Trinity, persuaded
me to put the finishing touch to my education, by joining a party who
were going down to Glyndewi in ----shire, "really to read." In an
unguarded moment, I consented; packed up books enough to last me for
five years, reading at the rate of twenty-four hours per day, wrote to
the governor announcing my virtuous intention, and was formally
introduced to the Rev. Mr Hanmer, Gordon's tutor, as one of his "cubs"
for the long vacation.

Six of us there were to be; a very mixed party, and not well mixed--a
social chaos. We had an exquisite from St Mary Hall, a pea-coated
Brazenose boatman, a philosophical water-drinker and union-debater from
Balliol, and a two bottle man from Christ Church. When we first met, it
was like oil and water; it seemed as if we might be churned together for
a century, and never coalesce: but in time, like punch-making, it turned
out that the very heterogeneousness of the ingredients was the zest of
the compound.

I had never heard of such a place as Glyndewi, nor had I an idea how to
get there. Gordon and Hanmer were gone already; so I packed myself on
the top of the Shrewsbury mail, as the direct communication between
Oxford and North Wales, and there became acquainted with No. 2 of my
fellows in transportation; (for, except Gordon and myself, we were all
utter strangers to each other.) "I say, Hawkins; let's feel those
ribbons a bit, will you?" quoth the occupant of the box-seat to our
respectable Jehu. "Can't indeed, sir, with these hosses; it's as much as
ever I can do to hold this here near leader." This was satisfactory;
risking one's neck in a tandem was all very well--a part of the regular
course of an Oxford education; but amateur drivers of stage coaches I
had always a prejudice against: let gentlemen keep their own
four-in-hands, and upset themselves and families, as they have an
undeniable right to do--but not the public. I looked at the first
speaker: at his pea-jacket, that is, which was all I could see of him:
Oxford decidedly. His cigar was Oxford too, by the villanous smell of
it. He took the coachman's implied distrust of his p