The latter are called _scouts_ in Oxford, and their office borders on what is generally understood by the word _valet_. The term _Gyp_ is well applied from [Greek: Gyps], a _vulture_, they being, in the broadest sense of the word, addicted to _prey_, and not over-scrupulous at both _picking_ and _stealing_, in spite of the Decalogue. I had one evening had a _wine party_, during the warm season of the year; we drank freely, and two of the party taking possession of my bed, I contented myself with the sofa. About six in the morning the _Gyp_ came into the room to collect boots, &c. and either not seeing me, or fancying I slept (the wine being left on the table,) he very coolly filled himself a glass, which he lost no time in raising to his lips, but ere he had swallowed a drop, having watched his motions, I _whistled_ (significant of recognition,) and down went the wine, glass and all, and out bolted our _gyp_, who _actually blushed_ the next time he saw me. Another anecdote touching lodging-house keepers, I will head DROPS OF BRANDY. A certain mistress of a lodging-house, in Green-street, Cambridge, where several students had rooms, having a propensity, not for the _ethereal_ charms of the music so called, but for the invigorating liquor itself, had a habit, with the assistance of what is called a _screw-driver_, but which might more aptly be termed a _screw-drawer_, of opening cupboard doors without resorting to the ordinary use of a key. By this means she had one day abstracted a bottle of brandy from the store of one of the students (now a barrister of some practice and standing,) with which, the better to consume it in undisturbed dignity, she retired to the temple of the goddess Cloacina. She had been missed for some time, and search was made, when she was found _half seas over_, as they say, with the remnant of the bottle still grasped in her hand, which she had plied so often to her mouth, that she was unable to lift her hand so high, or indeed to rise from her _seditious_ posture. Upon this scene a caricature of the first water was sketched, and circulated by some Cambridge wag; another threw off the following Epigrammatic Conun: Why is my Dalia like a rose? Perhaps, you'll say, because her breath Is sweeter than the flowers of earth: No--odious thought--it is, her nose Is redder than the reddest rose; Which she has long been very handy At colouring with _drops of brandy_. Another head of a lodging-house is a notorious member of what in Cambridge is called-- THE DIRTY-SHIRT CLUB.