There is not much work done in the summer term; an outsider might say, none at all. But then he would be judging from the external appearance of the place: the quads crowded with lounging men, waiting for drags to go to the cricket-ground; the wide-open windows with their gay flowers, whence issue sounds and scents of the heavy luncheons of the more languidly inclined; the river swarming with boats of all sorts and sizes; the Union rooms full of readers leisurely scanning the papers or dipping into the magazines, with ices or cigars to soothe or sweeten the summer afternoons; the roads busy with rattling pony-carriages bound for Woodstock or Abingdon, Witney or Thame; even the shops themselves are full, whose windows from without and wares within tempt the passing “loafer.” “Where are the reading men?” the stranger may well ask. There are plenty of them if you know where to find them. But it is just because the stranger is a stranger that he won’t find them. What can he know of the hours of heavy work got through in the quiet of those bright summer afternoons; of the one close-shut room on this deserted staircase of open, idle doors; of that back-quad attic, with its sported oak; of the “coach’s” crowded chambers, where, unheeding the charms of river or cricket-field, of Union-garden or leafy roads, he and his hourly pupils sit, “grinding for the schools”? Besides, the surprised and maybe shocked stranger must remember that a large number of men who come to Oxford do not come there merely for the sake of the degree. They take one if they can; the sooner they can, so much the better are they pleased. They come to be made men and gentlemen. A degree is only one of the many means to that end. It is only because some make it their all-absorbing motive that the University sends forth into the world so many prigs. Within the first week Frank had made many friends, most of them friends of Crawford’s, who had called at his suggestion. The secretaries of the Boat and Cricket Clubs had looked him up, to whom Frank, with much pleasure, had paid his entrance fee and annual subscriptions. The captain of the Paul’s company in the Rifle Corps had come to work upon his military ardour; the president of the College Debating Society, to arouse his ambition for oratory; the collector for the various Church Societies, to test his impartiality and charity. Frank was enabled, by his father’s wish and the means he had placed at his disposal, to join the various societies, and pay the subscriptions. But it was not this pecuniary willingness alone that gained for our freshman so much popularity. The pecuniary outlay was as follows:--