These events, which are here related at full, I can only attest by my
own word, except indeed the affair of the coming alive, which everybody
in Gottingen knows of. If any doubt the more unlikely parts of the
detail, I cannot help it. I have not written this with the view of empty
fame, and still less of profit. Philosophy has taught me to despise the
former, and my income renders the latter an object of no importance. I
merely do it to put my fellow-citizens on their guard against the
machinations of the old fellow with the snuff-coloured surtout, the
scarlet waistcoat, and the wooden leg. Above all, they should carefully
abstain from signing any paper he may present to them, however plausible
his offers may be. By mere thoughtlessness in this respect, I brought
myself into a multitude of dangers and difficulties, from which every
one in the same predicament may not escape so easily as I have done. I
shall conclude with acknowledging that a strong change has been wrought
in my opinions; and that from ridiculing the doctrines of the sage of
Samos, I am now one of their firmest supporters. In a word, I am what I
have designated myself,
"A MODERN PYTHAGOREAN."
COLLEGE THEATRICALS
[_MAGA._ DECEMBER 1843.]
It wanted but two or three weeks to the Christmas vacation (alas! how
many years ago!) and we, the worshipful society of undergraduates of
---- College, Oxford, were beginning to get tired of the eternal round
of supper-parties which usually marked the close of our winter's
campaign, and ready to hail with delight any proposition that had the
charm of novelty. A three weeks' frost had effectually stopped the
hunting; all the best tandem-leaders were completely screwed; the
freshmen had been "larked" till they were grown as cunning as magpies;
and the Dean had set up a divinity lecture at two o'clock, and published
a stringent proclamation against rows in the Quad. It was, in short,
during a particularly uninteresting state of things, with the snow
falling lazily upon the grey roofs and silent quadrangle, that some
half-dozen of us had congregated in Bob Thornhill's rooms, to get over
the time between lunch and dinner with as little trouble to our mental
and corporeal faculties as possible. Those among us who had been for the
last three months promising to themselves to begin to read "next week,"
had now put off that too easy creditor, conscience, till "next term."
One alone had settled his engagements of that nature, or, in the
language of his "_Testamur_"--the prettiest bit of Latin, he declared,
that he ever saw--"_satisfecit examinatoribus_." Unquestionably, in his
case, the examiners must have had the rare virtue of being very easily
satisfied. In fact, Mr Savile's discharge of his educational engagements
was rather a sort of "whitewashing" than a payment in full. His passing
was what is technically called a "shave," a metaphor alluding to that
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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