The Further Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green, an Oxford Under-Graduate: Being a Continuation of "The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green, an Oxford Freshman"Bede, Cuthbert
History
The Further Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green, an Oxford Under-Graduate: Being a Continuation of "The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green, an Oxford Freshman"
Bede, Cuthbert
University of Oxford -- Fiction
Mr. Bouncer, therefore, amused himself equally as much to his own
satisfaction as if he had been one of the envied eight, by occasionally
paddling about with Charles Larkyns in an old pair-oar, built by Davis
and King, and bought by Mr. Bouncer of its late Brazenfacian proprietor,
when that gentleman, after a humorous series of plucks, rustications,
and heavy debts, had finally been compelled to migrate to the King's
Bench, for that purification of purse and person commonly designated
"whitewashing." When Charles Larkyns and his partner did not use their
pair-oar, the former occupied his outrigger skiff; and the latter,
taking Huz and Buz on board a sailing boat, tacked up and down the river
with great skill, the smoke gracefully curling from his meerschaum or
short black pipe,--for Mr. Bouncer disapproved of smoking cigars at
those times when the wind would have assisted him to get through them.
[Illustration]
"Hullo, Giglamps! here we are! as the clown says in the pantermime,"
sung out the little gentleman as he came up with our hero, who was
performing some extraordinary feats in full sight of the University
crew, who were just starting from their barge; "you get no end of
exercise out of your tub, I should think, by the style you work those
paddles: They go in and out beautiful! Splish, splash; splish, splash!
You must be one of the _wherry_ identical Row-brothers-row, whose
voices kept tune and whose oars kept time, you know. You ought to go and
splish-splash in the Freshman's River, Giglamps;--but I forgot--you
ain't a freshman now, are you, old feller? Those swells in the
University boats look as though they were bursting with envy--not to
say, with laughter," added Mr. Bouncer, _sotto voce_. "Who taught you to
do the dodge in such a stunning way, Giglamps?"
"Why, last term, Charles Larkyns did," responded Mr. Verdant Green, with
the freshness of a Freshman still lingering lovingly upon him. "I've not
forgotten what he told me,--to put in my oar deep, and to bring it out
with a jerk. But though I make them go as deep as I can, and jerk them
out as much as possible, yet the boat _will_ keep turning round, and I
can't keep it straight at all; and the oars are very heavy and
unmanageable, and keep slipping out of the rowlocks--"
"Commonly called _rullochs_," put in Mr. Bouncer, as a parenthetical
correction, or marginal note on Mr. Verdant Green's words.
"And when the Trinity boat went by, I could scarcely get out of their
way; and they said very unpleasant things to me; and, altogether, I can
assure you that it has made me very hot."
"And a capital thing, too, Giglamps, this cold November day," said Mr.
Bouncer; "I'm obliged to keep my coppers warm with this pea-coat, and my
pipe. Charley came alongside me just now, on purpose to fire off one of
his poetical quotations. He said that I reminded him of Beattie's
_Minstrel_:--
"'Dainties he heeded not, nor gaud, nor toy,
Save one short pipe.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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