“All this, you will say, cuts out a tolerably full employment for the term. But when you can call this in your recollections, ‘_terminus alba cretâ notandus_,’ it will be worth trouble. I believe the intentions of most freshmen are good, and the first term generally well spent: the second and third are often the trial, when one gets confidence in oneself; and the sense of what is right and honourable must come in place of that deference for one’s superior officers, which is at first instinctive. I am glad you find you can do as you please, and choose your own society without making yourself at all remarkable. So I found, for the same reasons that facilitate the matter to you. Domestic or private education, I believe, throws more difficulties in the way of saying ‘No’ when it is your pleasure so to do, and the poor wight only gets laughed at instead of cultivated. After all, one may have too many acquaintance, unexceptionable though they be. But I do not know that much loss of time can occur to a person of perfectly sober habits, as you are, if he leaves wine parties with a clear head at chapel time, and eschews supping and lounging, and lunching and gossiping, and tooling in High Street, and such matters, which belong more to particular cliques than to a generally extended acquaintance in College. In all these things, going not as a raw lad, but as a man of nineteen, with my father’s entire confidence, I found I could settle the thing to my satisfaction in no time: your circumstances are precisely the same, and the result will probably be the same. I applaud, and κυδίζε, and clap you on the back for rowing: row, box, fence, and walk with all possible sturdiness. Another thing: I believe an idea prevails that it is necessary to ride sometimes, to show yourself of equestrian rank. If you have any mind this way, write to Franklin to send Stevens with your horse; keep him a few weeks, and I will allow you a £5 note to assert your equestrian dignity, now or at any other time. This is a better style of thing than piaffing about on hired Oxford cocky-horses, like Jacky Popkin, and all such half-measures. The only objection to such doings is, that you certainly do see a style of men always across a horse who are fit for nothing else, and _non constat_ that they always know a hock from a stifle-joint. But this is only _per accidens_. And if you have a fancy for an occasional freak this way, remember I was bred in the saddle, and, whatever my present opinions may be from longer experience, can fully enter into your ideas.” You will see by his answer how readily George entered into some of his father’s ideas, though I don’t think he ever sent for his horse. A few weeks later, in 1841, he writes:—