RED PAINT AT OXFORD Sketches BY “PISH” AND “TUSH” London GREENING & CO., LTD. 20 CECIL COURT, CHARING CROSS ROAD 1904 PREFACE. These little sketches must not be taken too seriously, and it must not be imagined that they describe the most prominent characteristics of the good sportsmen portrayed in them. We have only turned our attention to the lightest side of their ’Varsity careers because we think that the most amusing; but nearly every one of the Undergrads referred to has distinguished himself in some less lurid but more useful way. Five ‘Blues’ altogether have been amassed among the gentlemen who move about and have their being herein; while the Pilot upset the odds of 33 to 1 freely laid against him, scraped through on the rails with a rush at the finish, and secured a creditable ‘First.’ When he is Archbishop of Canterbury, Freddy hopes to be in the Cabinet, and, it appears already during the short year that has elapsed since we all ‘went down,’ that Squiff is well on his way to ruling a Province in India. Who knows whether he and the Pilot, in alliance, may not yet be the means of converting that most hearty blot of Ink the Rajah of Jellipore! ONE AUTHOR. THE OTHER. LONDON, _May, 1904_. CONTENTS. PAGE. I. ON MOTORING TO TOWN 1 II. A QUIET EVENING 15 III. CONCERNING THE THEATRE 27 IV. THE MUTUAL HELP SOCIETY 53 V. ON THE STRENUOUSNESS OF LIFE 67 VI. RUGGER NIGHT 87 VII. HOW WE RAGGED “THE SUBURBAN” 105 VIII. AN “EIGHTS’ WEEK” 119 RED PAINT AT OXFORD. I. ON MOTORING TO TOWN. Freddy said it was very cheap, and so I went, having only seven and sixpence, which I had borrowed from our landlady. Freddy had less. Soon after eight I was aroused by Freddy’s acrobatic treble and the shrieks of an impossible check suit. He mentioned that he was coming to breakfast with me as the men in his digs never came down till ten. Just then the Pilot announced in a loud and penetrating voice that ‘a perspiring stinkocar had arrived outside’ and so I hastened on my dressing to the accompaniment of ‘The Miller’s Daughter,’ played by Freddy with one finger and the loud pedal down. In the middle of the second kidney there was a loud report from the street, and Mrs. MacNab, whose cat consumes an abnormal quantity of our whisky, rushed into the room exclaiming that ‘the Chuffer had brought round the hengine.’