We were both from the north, freshmen on our way to Cambridge. I from the West Riding of Yorkshire, he from the Highland Hills of Aberdeenshire; and in the old Highflyer we traveled all the way from Ferrybridge, two hundred mortal miles and eighteen weary hours, the only inside passengers to Cambridge. Each of us took the other for an old collegian, neither of us being exceeding verdant, and both cognizant of that excessive college etiquette, which will not suffer a man to save a classmate, unintroduced, from drowning, not a word passed between us; we both wished to be cruel knowing—both proved, in that respect at least, to be cruel green. It was by odds the dullest and most tedious journey I ever have experienced—though I have traveled since over the half of two hemispheres, and though traveling, like misery, makes us acquainted with strange bedfellows. I never shall forget how glad I was when the coach stopped at the Harp Hotel, and I got out, trusting that I should never again encounter that stiff, stately Don, who could not even speak to a fellow, because he was a freshman. And he, it seems, was all the while putting up the like orisons against all future meetings with myself, Frank Forester. Six hours later we were sworn friends, and never were, and now never can be, hap what hap, aught else in this world. It so happened that I was not acquainted with a single man of my own college, when I went up to the university, all my old brother Etonians being either Johnians or Trinity men, while I had entered at Caius. I had the blues, therefore, most awfully; felt as if I was alone in a new and perilous world; a shipwrecked mariner left all among the cannibals “a-galloping ashore;” and, when dinner-time arrived, it was only by a mighty exertion of energy and pluck that I put on, for the first time, those singularly unbecoming habiliments ycleped cap and gown, and sallied forth to brave, as I supposed, alone, unknown and unsupported, the criticisms and witticisms, and impertinent comments of my there-after to be classmates. After inquiring carefully of my _gyp_ the way into _hall_, the particular table at which I was to sit, and all the etiquettes, not to be conversant with which is to a freshman the very fiend’s arch mock—after taking especial care not to put on my trencher wrong side before, and to arrange my gown in what I imagined to be a very devil-may-care fashion, forth I went, with about as pleasant a prospect as the gallows before me, but without the despairing pluck which enables the poor culprit to face that prospect manfully.