Supper time presently came, and Hector and his companions were assembled. Beside Lord Sad-dog and his tutor, there was a senior fellow, and a master of arts, all of our college and all of them the prime bucks of the place. My late high expectations of learning and virtue were entirely forgotten. There was novelty in every word they uttered; and I listened to their conversation with the most attentive ardour. Nor did I feel astonishment to hear that dogs, horses, gluttony, drunkenness, and debauchery were the grand blessings of life: Hector had prepared me to hear any thing with but little surprise. The Lord and the Squire gloried in braving and breaking the statutes of the college and the university; the tutor, fellow, and master of arts in eluding them. The history they gave of themselves was, that the former could ride, drive, swear, kick scoundrels, bilk prostitutes, commit adultery, and breed riots: the latter could cant, lie, act the hypocrite, hum the proctors, and protect their companions in debauchery: in gluttony drunkenness and libidinous thoughts they were all avowed rivals. Hector descending to trifling vices, vaunted of having been five times in one week _imposed_ (that is, reprimanded by set tasks) for having neglected lectures and prayers, and worn scarlet, green and gold; while the more heroic Lord Sad-dog told how he had been twice privately _rusticated_, for an amour with the bar-maid of a coffee-house whom he dared the vice-chancellor himself to banish the city. Fearful of being surpassed, they exaggerated their own wickedness and often imputed crimes to themselves which they had neither the opportunity nor the courage to commit. That I might appear worthy of the choice group among whom I was admitted, Hector, by relating in a distorted manner things that had happened, but attributing to me such motives as he imagined he should have been actuated by had he been the agent, told various falsehoods of my exploits. I had too great a mixture of sheepishness and vanity to contradict him in such honourable society, and therefore accepted praise at which I ought to have blushed. During supper, while they were all gormandizing and encouraging me to do the same, his lordship, addressing his tutor, asked--'D----n me, Jack, can you tell me why it was I took you into my pay? What the d--mn--t----n are you good for?'--'Tell you? To be sure I can! You will not pretend that, when you first came under my tuition, you were the man you now are? Who taught you to laugh at doctors, bully proctors, stare the vice chancellor out of countenance, and parade the streets of a Sunday in sermon time but I?'--'You!'--'Yes! I!'--'D----n my body, well said, Jack!' roared Hector. 'D----n me you are a good one! Go it! Keep it up! D----n me go it!' The tutor continued--'