The more substantial furnishings in the rooms are usually permanent, belonging to the college: each successive occupant is charged for interest on the investment and for depreciation by wear. Thus the furniture is far more comfortable than in an American college room and costs the occupant less. Bed and table linen, cutlery, and a few of the more personal furnishings the student brings himself. If one neglects to bring them, as I confess I did through ignorance, the deficiency is supplied by the scout, a dignitary in the employ of the college, who stands in somewhat more than the place of a servant and less than that of a parent to half a dozen fellows whose rooms are adjacent. The scout levies on the man above for sheets, on the man below for knives and forks, and on the man across the staircase for table linen. There is no call for shame on the one part or resentment on the other, for is not the scout the representative of the hospitality of the college? "When you have time, sir," he says kindly, "you will order your own linen and cutlery." How high a state of civilization is implied in this manner of receiving a freshman can be appreciated only by those who have arrived friendless at an American university. The scout is in effect a porter, "goody," and eating-club waiter rolled into one. He has frequently a liberal dash of the don, which he has acquired by extended residence at the university; for among all the shifting generations of undergraduates, only he and the don are permanent. When he reaches middle age he wears a beard if he chooses, and then he is usually taken for a don by the casual visitor. There is no harm in this; the scout plays the part _con amore_, and his long breeding enables him to sustain it to a marvel. Yet for the most part the scout belongs with the world of undergraduates. He has his social clubs and his musical societies; he runs, plays cricket, and rows, and, finally, he meets the Cambridge scout in the inter-varsity matches. His pay the scout receives in part from the college, but mostly from the students, who give him two to four pounds a term each, according to his deserts. All broken bread, meat, and wine are his perquisites, and tradition allows him to "bag" a fair amount of tea, coffee, and sugar. Out of all this he makes a sumptuous living. I knew only one exception, and that was when four out of six men on a certain scout's staircase happened to be vegetarians, and five teetotalers. The poor fellow was in extremities for meat and in desperation for drink. There was only one more pitiable sight in college, and that was the sole student on the staircase who ate meat and drank wine; the scout bagged food and drink from him ceaselessly. At the end of one term the student left a half dozen bottles of sherry, which he had merely tasted, in his sideboard; and when he came back it was gone. "Where's my sherry, Betts?" he asked. "Sherry, sir? you ain't got no sherry." "But I left six bottles; you had no right to