Produced by D Alexander, Juliet Sutherland and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net TALES FROM "BLACKWOOD" Contents of this Volume _A Reading Party in the Long Vacation_ _Father Tom and the Pope_ _La Petite Madelaine. By Mrs Southey_ _Bob Burke's Duel with Ensign Brady. By the late William Maginn, LL.D._ _The Headsman: A Tale of Doom_ _The Wearyful Woman. By John Galt_ WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS EDINBURGH AND LONDON TALES FROM "BLACKWOOD." A READING PARTY IN THE LONG VACATION. [_MAGA._ AUGUST 1843.] CHAPTER I. Every one who knows Oxford, and a good many besides, must have heard of certain periodical migrations of the younger members of that learned university into distant and retired parts of her Majesty's dominions, which (on the "_lucus a non lucendo_" principle) are called and known by the name of Reading Parties. Some half-dozen undergraduates, in peril of the coming examination, form themselves into a joint-stock cramming company; take £30 or £40 shares in a private tutor; pitch their camp in some Dan or Beersheba which has a reputation for dulness; and, like other joint-stock companies, humbug the public, and sometimes themselves, into the belief that they are "doing business." For these classical bubbles, the long vacation is the usual season, and Wales one of the favourite localities; and certainly, putting "Reading" out of the question, three fine summer months might be worse spent, than in climbing the mountains, and whipping the trout-streams, of that romantic land. Many a quiet sea-side town, or picturesque fishing-village, might be mentioned, which owes no little of its summer gaiety, and perhaps something of its prosperity, to the annual visit of "the Oxonians:" many a fair girl has been indebted for the most piquant flirtation of the season to the "gens togata," who were reading at the little watering-place to which fate and papa had carried her for the race-week or the hunt-ball: and whatever the effect of these voluntary rustications upon the class lists in Oxford, they certainly have procured for the parties occasionally a very high "provincial celebrity." I know that when we beat our retreat from summer quarters at Glyndewi in 18--, the sighs of our late partners were positively heart-rending, and the blank faces of the deserted billiard-marker and solitary livery-stable groom haunt me to this day.