"Dear Kennedy--Come to supper and cards at ten. Bruce wants to be introduced to you. Yours, "`C Brogten.'" "Yes, I think I shall. I don't like that fellow Brogten, who is always thrusting himself in my way," said Kennedy. "Heigh ho!" and Kennedy leant his head on his arm, and fell into a reverie, thinking that after all his three years at college might be over almost before he was aware of how much time he lost. "I hope you don't play cards much," said Julian. "Why? I hear Hazlet has been denouncing them in hall with unctuous fervour, and I do think it was that which led me to join in a game which was instantly proposed by some of the men who sat near." "I don't say that there's anything diabolical," said Julian, smiling, "in paint and pasteboard, or that I should have the least objection to play them myself if I wanted amusement, but I think them--except very occasionally, and in moderation--a waste of time; and if you play for money I don't think it does you any good." "Well, I've never played for money yet. By the bye, do you know Bruce? He has the character and manner of a very gentlemanly fellow." "Yes, I know him," said Julian, who made a point of holding his tongue about a man when he had nothing favourable to say. "Oh, ay, I forgot; of course; he's a Hartonian. But didn't you think him gentlemanly?" "He has an easy manner, and is accustomed to good society, which is usually all that is intended by the word," said Julian. "I think I must go just this one evening. I like to see a variety of men; one learns something from it." Kennedy went. The supper took place in Brogten's rooms, and the party then adjourned to Bruce's, where they immediately began a game at whist for half-a-crown points, and then "unlimited loo." Kennedy was induced to play "just to see what it was like." As the game proceeded he became more and more excited; the others were accustomed to the thing, and concealed their eagerness; but Kennedy, who was younger and more inexperienced than any of them, threw himself into the game, and drank heedlessly of the wine that freely circulated. Surely if guardian spirits attend the footsteps of youth, one angel must have wept that evening "tears such as angels weep" to see him with his flushed face and sparkling eyes, eagerly seizing the sums he won, or, with clenched hand and contracted brow, anxiously awaiting the result of some adverse turn in the chances of the game. I remember once to have accidentally entered a scene like this in going to borrow something from a neighbour's room; and I shall never forget the almost tiger-like eagerness and haggard anxiety depicted on the countenances of the men who were playing for sums far too extravagant for an undergraduate's purse.