[Illustration] * * * * * That man's a good bat who can time, judge, and mark right The ball as it flies from the right hand of ARKWRIGHT. And the Oxford men cheer as they see the stumps fall When the Magdalen bowler delivers the ball. "My team," said G. MORDAUNT, "requires only one lift; If I get it the Cantabs may go and be Cunliffed." And I think he was wise in awarding, don't you, To this tricky left-handed young bowler his blue. And lastly the Captain, he put in his thumb, For he very much wanted to pull out a plum: "I have it," he cried, like a modern Jack Horner, And he promptly scored one as he pulled out Plum WARNER. * * * * * When I was a freshman at Cambridge (_eheu fugaces!_) I remember being both impressed and terrified at having pointed out to me a tutor of a certain College who was said to be the hero of a Bacchanalian incident. The story went that the tutor, returning from some feast with a party of friends, fell, by mischance, into one of the narrow streams of water that flow at the side of the Cambridge streets. Striking out vigorously, he shouted, "Save the rest, I can swim." No doubt the story is still told, for the supposed hero of it is still alive. Indeed, when a caricature of him was published some years ago in _Vanity Fair_, the biography by JEHU JUNIOR closed with the words, "He can swim." Yet the story, as affecting Mr. DASH, of Blank College, is manifestly false, for it is older than the century. The curious may find it in its original form in the lately published volume of S. T. COLERIDGE'S letters. The poet relates it of an undergraduate of his day who had taken part in a drunken revel. * * * * * But the ways of stories are at all times inscrutable. I have myself--I confess it without a blush--deliberately invented and spread abroad a story about a semi-public dinner. I did so merely because it struck me as containing elements of humour. Besides, it not only might have happened, but ought to have happened. A year or two later six gentlemen, who had been present when the incident did not occur, related it back to me, each one with a little special embellishment of his own. Some of them were magistrates, most of them were fathers of families, and all were honourable men. Yet they were all prepared to stake their reputations on the absolute veracity of this myth; and, what is even more curious, they retailed it to its inventor and disseminator. * * * * *