Americans -- England -- Oxford; Education -- United States; Education, Higher -- England -- Oxford; University of Oxford
After a quarter of an hour in the store the fellows drop off by twos
and threes to read, or to take coffee in some one's room. With the
coffee a glass of port is usually taken. Almost all the fellows have
spirits and wines, which are sold by the college as freely as any
other commodity. If a man wishes a cup served in his room, he has only
to say so to his scout. If one waits long enough in the store, he is
almost certain to be asked to coffee and wine. The would-be host
circulates the room tapping the elect on the shoulder and speaking a
quiet word, as they select Bones men at Yale. If half a dozen men are
left in the store uninvited, one of them is apt to rise to the
occasion and invite the lot. It scarcely matters how unpopular a
fellow may be. The willingness to loaf is the touch of nature that
makes all men kin.
After coffee more men fall off to their books; but the faithful are
likely to spend the evening talking or playing cards--bridge, loo,
napp, and whist, with the German importation of skat and the American
importation of poker. In one college I knew, there was a nomadic
roulette wheel that wandered from room to room pursued by the shadow
of the dean, but seldom failed of an evening to gather its flock about
it.
V
EVENING
In the evening, when the season permits, the fellows sit out of doors
after dinner, smoking and playing bowls. There is no place in which
the spring comes more sweetly than in an Oxford garden. The high walls
are at once a trap for the first warm rays of the sun and a barrier
against the winds of March. The daffodils and crocuses spring up with
joy as the gardener bids; and the apple and cherry trees coddle
against the warm north walls, spreading out their early buds
gratefully to the mild English sun. For long, quiet hours after dinner
they flaunt their beauty to the fellows smoking, and breathe their
sweetness to the fellows playing bowls. "No man," exclaims the
American visitor, "could live four years in these gardens of delight
and not be made gentler and nobler!" Perhaps! though not altogether in
the way the visitor imagines. When the flush of summer is on, the
loiterers loll on the lawn full length; and as they watch the insects
crawl among the grass they make bets on them, just as the gravest and
most reverend seniors have been known to do in America.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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