Mr. Verdant Green would also study the news of the day, in the floating reading-room of the University Barge; and, from these comfortable quarters, indite a letter to Miss Patty, and look out upon the picturesque river with its moving life of eights and four-oars sweeping past with measured stroke. A great feature of the river picture, just about this time, was the crowd of newly introduced canoes; their occupants, in every variety of bright-coloured shirts and caps, flashing up and down a double paddle, the ends of which were painted in gay colours, or emblazoned with the owner's crest. But Mr. Verdant Green, with a due regard for his own preservation from drowning, was content with looking at these cranky canoes, as they flitted, like gaudy dragon-flies, over the surface of the water. Fain would the writer of these pages linger over these memoirs of Mr. Verdant Green. Fain would he tell how his hero <VG306-2.JPG> did many things that might be thought worthy of mention, besides those which have been already chronicled; but, this narrative has already reached its assigned limits, and, even a historian must submit to be kept within reasonable bounds. The Dramatist has the privilege of escaping many difficulties, and passing swiftly over confusing details, by the simple intimation that "An interval of twenty years is supposed to take place between the --- * "The Vice-Chancellor, by the direction of the Hebdomadal Council, has issued a notice against the practice of pigeon-shooting, &c., in the neighbourhood of the University." - ~Oxford Intelligence~, Decr. 1854. -=- [AN OXFORD FRESHMAN 307] Acts." Suffice it, therefore, for Mr. Verdant Green's historian, to avail himself of this dramatic art, and, in a very few sentences, to pass over the varied events of two years, in order that he may arrive at a most important passage in his hero's career. The Grind came off without Mr. Verdant Green being enabled to communicate to Miss Patty Honeywood, that he was the winner of a silver cup. Indeed, he did not arrive at the winning post until half an hour after it had been first reached by Mr. Four-in-hand Fosbrooke on his horse ~Tearaway~; for, after narrowly escaping a blow from the hatchet of an irate agriculturist who professed great displeasure at any one presuming to come a galloperin' and a tromplin' over his fences, Mr. Verdant Green finally "came to grief," by being flung into a disagreeably-moist ditch. And though, for that evening, he forgot his troubles, in the jovial dinner that took place at ~the Red Lion~, yet, the next morning, they were immensely aggravated, when the Tutor told them that he had heard of the steeple-chase, and should expel every gentleman who had taken part in it. The Tutor, however, relented, and did not carry out his threat; though Mr. Verdant Green suffered almost as much as if he had really kept it.