At school his football was treated with contempt, yet with silence, except by very small boys. At college he is anxious to do a little at games. The captain of the boats asks him, as a matter of course, to go down to the river, to be tubbed (or coached) in a pair-oar boat; and he replies that he “will willingly spare half an hour.” He shows some good points at the river; is painstaking and neat. His half-hour is mercilessly multiplied day after day. He is to be found at the starting-point in February, in his college Torpid, and proves a stately nonentity or passenger; discovers that rowing abrades more than his skin, and gives it up just before he is asked to. For the future he sculls alone, once a week, when it is mild, and oftener when his friends are visiting him--which he does not encourage. At such times he learns that it is quite true that Oxford possesses some fine drawings, marbles, stained glass, and a library of little use to a determined “Greats” man. These he exhibits to the visitors impatiently and with pride. He returns to his work unruffled. Already he has scored one First Class and a _proxime_ for a prize. Yet his tutor pays him qualified compliments, which he attributes to the natural bitterness of a second class man. The tutor sometimes asks him what he reads; to which he replies brightly with a long list of texts, etc. “Yes, but what do you read when you unbend?” says the tutor. “Did you ever read _Midshipman Easy_?” (with a touch of exasperation). The youth blushingly replies: “No, I never unbend.” Nor is the other far more pleased when he brings with him, on a short vacation boating holiday, a volume of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_. Now and then he speaks at the Union. There and at afternoon teas with ladies he is known for the lucidity of his commonplaces and the length of his quotations. For the most part he talks only of his work and the current number of the _Times_. His work, meantime, is less and less satisfactory to every one but his coach. Some say that he will get another first, and will not deserve it. Already he is learning that three or four years among “boys” is not helpful to his future. No one so much as he emphasises the distinction between third and second year undergraduates. He is always looking for really improving conversation, and play of mind without any play. A book tea would please him, if it were not so frivolous.