Oxford Days; or, How Ross Got His DegreeWeatherly, F. E. (Frederic Edward)
History
Oxford Days; or, How Ross Got His Degree
Weatherly, F. E. (Frederic Edward)
University of Oxford
The plan at Paul’s is similar to that at most colleges. The
undergraduates are distributed among the tutors, a certain number
being apportioned to each. They are not necessarily to attend their
lectures, but they are to go to them for advice and private assistance
in their work. In many colleges, battels are paid by the undergraduate
to his own tutor. The tutors together draw up a scheme of lectures,
which the undergraduates attend simply according to the necessities of
the examination for which they are reading, and not according to the
particular tutor to whom they are assigned. Frank was assigned to Mr.
Wood, but did not attend his Lectures in his first term, as they were
for more advanced men. He learnt all this when he went to him at the
Dean’s direction. What he failed to find in the Dean he found in Mr.
Wood, who met him cordially, took him into his inner room, made him
sit comfortably on a sofa in the large bay window, and then chatted
with him for half an hour. The result of the conversation was that
Frank was to work for Responsions,[6] which would come on at the end
of the current term; not to think about Moderations[7] till he was
safe through this first ordeal; and to come on Sunday evenings to Mr.
Wood’s Greek Testament Lectures. The hours and subjects of the other
lectures, he told Frank, he would find posted on the Lodge-gate on
the following day. He asked him a few questions about his father and
the Vicar of Porchester, who was an old friend; about his school and
college friends; asked him whether he boated or played cricket; whether
he meant to join the Union; told him if he wanted any books out of
the college library to come to him; concluding hurriedly, as another
freshman, seeking advice, knocked timorously and entered.
The visit next morning to the Master was not unlike that to the
Dean--a purely formal one. The Master’s questions chiefly related to
cricket and boating, indicating an anxiety to discover the promising
men for the Eleven or the Boats. Frank, as he sat in the Master’s
arm-chair, while the old gentleman warmed his coat-tails by an
imaginary fire, could not help falling to making doggerel--
“‘D’ stands for Discipline, Duty, and Dean;
‘M’ must the Master and Merriment mean.”
But there he stopped by lack of rhymes and a general stampede of the
Freshmen, to the great relief of the much-enduring Master.
Frank selected for Responsions the books he had offered for
Matriculation, the usual and natural course; and with the assistance of
Crawford to interpret the Lecture-List on the college gates, he made
out his own lecture-card as follows:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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