"Ten thousand pounds," said that judicious relative, "will buy him his commission. The lad's handsome and clever; he can play whist now better than my boy's private tutor. By the time his ten thousand's gone, we'll pick up an heiress for him. 'Gad! how like my poor brother he is about the eyes!" So Frank was started in life with a commission in the Light Dragoons, an extremely good opinion of himself, and as much of his ten thousand pounds as he had not already anticipated during the one term he spent at Oxford before he was rusticated. By the way, so many of my partners, and other young gentlemen with whom I am acquainted, have gone through this process, that it was many years before I understood the meaning of the term. For long I understood _rustication_ to be merely a playful form of expression for "taking a degree;" and I was the more confirmed in this impression from observing that those who had experienced this treatment were spoken of with high respect and approbation by their fellow-collegians. What odd creatures young men are! I can understand their admiring prowess in field-sports and athletic pursuits, just as I could understand one's admiring a statesman, an author, an artist, or a successful man in any pursuit of life; but why they should think it creditable to get drunk, to run into debt, to set at defiance all the rules and regulations enacted for their own benefit, and to conduct themselves in unswerving opposition to the wishes of their nearest and dearest friends, and all to do themselves as much harm as possible, is more than I can comprehend. Girls are not wrong-headed like this. Where the son is the source of all the annoyance, and ill-humour, and retrenchment in a family, the daughter is generally the mainstay, and comfort, and sunshine of the whole house. When shall we poor women be done justice to? But to return to Frank. By his own account he was a gambler, of course. A man turned loose upon the world, with such an education as most English gentlemen deem befitting their sons, and without means to indulge the tastes that education has led him to acquire, is very likely to become so.