; such, as cutting in two at one
sword-blow a suspended shoulder of mutton; lifting a long table by his
teeth; squeezing a quart pewter pot flat between his fingers; and other
little recreations of those who are "born unto Rapha."

But the Cantabs, and a couple of gallant Oxford boating men who had
fraternised with them, testified their admiration in their simple honest
way, by putting down their pipes whenever they saw Valencia coming, and
just lifting their hats when they met her close. It was taking a
liberty, no doubt. "But I tell you, Mellot," said Wynd, as brave and
pure-minded a fellow as ever pulled in the University eight, "the Arabs,
when they see such a creature, say, 'Praise Allah for beautiful women,'
and quite right; they may remind some fellows of worse things, but they
always remind me of heaven and the angels; and my hat goes off to her by
instinct, just as it does when I go into a church."

That was all; simple chivalrous admiration, and delight in her
loveliness, as in that of a lake, or a mountain sunset; but nothing
more. The good fellows had no time, indeed, to fancy themselves in love
with her, or her with them, for every day was too short for them; what
with reading all the morning, and starting out in the afternoon in
strange garments (which became shabbier and more ragged very rapidly as
the weeks slipped on) upon all manner of desperate errands; walking
unheard-of-distances, and losing their way upon the mountains;
scrambling cliffs and now and then falling down them; camping all night
by unpronounceable lakes, in the hope of catching mythical trout; trying
in all ways how hungry, thirsty, dirty, and tired a man could make
himself, and how far he could go without breaking his neck, any approach
to which catastrophe was hailed (as were all other mishaps) as "all in
the day's work," and "the finest fun in the world," by that
unconquerable English "lebensglueckseligkeit," which is a perpetual
wonder to our sober German cousins. Ah, glorious twenty-one, with your
inexhaustible powers of doing and enjoying, eating and hungering,
sleeping and sitting up, reading and playing! Happy are those who still
possess you, and can take their fill of your golden cup, steadied, but
not saddened, by the remembrance, that for all things a good and loving
God will bring them into judgment. Happier still those who (like a few)
retain in body and soul the health and buoyancy of twenty-one on to the
very verge of fo