The boy had an excellent education, too—at eight, a private tutor, who could never keep him out of the stable, and into the pockets of whose sad-coloured garments his pupil was continually putting white-mice and such abnormal vermin—nay, on one occasion, this long-suffering Mentor discovered a ferret in the tail of his coat, and an eel in the crown of his hat; at twelve, transferred to Eton, where he was placed as low as he possibly could be, and, notwithstanding repeated floggings, and constant wiggings from “my tutor,” persevered in the study of natural history with an ardour that could by no means be brought to harmonise with the rules of that elegant college. Corporal punishment is—or at least, in young Plumtree’s day, used to be—inflicted for the following misdemeanours, of which he was habitually found guilty, viz.: Entertaining fighting-dogs, at an outlay of a shilling per week, and making use of the same in their combative capacity; associating, both in and out of bounds, with cads and such low persons, with aggressive views on personal property in the form of hares, pheasants, etc., at Stoke, Burnham, Thames Ditton, and elsewhere; keeping singing-birds in a bureau that ought to have been devoted to school-books, and white-mice in the lower drawers of the same, along with clean linen; also, and this partiality for ferrets was one of the boy’s most remarkable characteristics, taking a female of that species into three-o’clock school, and producing her, so to speak, in open court; finally, never, under any circumstances, knowing one word of his lesson. When Plumtree left college, the head master, who, like many other head masters, had rather a weakness for a pickle in his heart, took him kindly by the hand, and recommended him, with perfect single-mindedness, to devote his energies to the habits of beasts and birds, and the study of comparative anatomy, “the only mental labour, Plumtree,” added the don, with extreme kindness, “for which you seem either qualified or inclined.” A lad of such tastes was pretty sure to be sent to one of the universities: and after an interval of a delicious twelvewmonth at home, during which period of relaxation the young ’squire not only destroyed every rat in every barn within a day’s ride of The Ashes, but also made acquaintance with every tap of beer, and struck up a friendship with every blackguard, within the same distance, this promising acolyte was entered at Brazen-Nose, and went up to keep his terms at Alma Mater, and acquire whatever knowledge was most adapted to his intellectual hunger, at that repository of learning.