“Rejoiced; so am I. I would not but have been undeceived for a thousand guineas. Nothing but seeing you here so quiet, so studious, surrounded by problems, would have convinced me. Ecod! I can’t tell you how I was startled. I had been told some queer stories, to be sure, about your Cambridge etiquette. I heard that two Cambridge men, one of St. John’s, the other of Trinity, had met on the top of Vesuvius, and that though they knew each other by sight and reputation, yet, never having been formally introduced, like two simpletons, they looked at each other in silence, and left the mountain separately and without speaking: and that cracked fellow-commoner, Meadows, had shewn me a caricature, taken from the life, representing a Cambridge man drowning, and another gownsman standing on the brink, exclaiming, ‘Oh! that I had had the honour of being introduced to that man, that I might have taken the liberty of saving him!’ But,--it, thought I, he never would carry it so far with his own uncle!--I never heard your father was a gay man,” continued he, musing; “yet, as you sit in that light, the likeness is--” I moved instantly--“But it’s impossible, you know, it’s impossible. Come, my dear fellow, come; I must get some dinner. Who could he be? Never were two people so like!” We dined at the inn, and spent the evening together; and instead of the fifty, the “_last fifty_,” he generously gave me a draft lor three times the amount. He left Cambridge the next morning and his last words were, as he entered his carriage, “My brother _was_ a handsome man; and there _was_ a Lady Somebody, who, the world said was partial to him. She _may_ have a son. Most surprising likeness. God bless you. Read hard, you young dog; remember. Like as two Brothers!”--I never saw him again. His death, which happened a few months afterwards, in consequence ol his being _bit_ in a bet, contracted when he was a “little elevated,” left me the heir to his fine estate; I wish I could add, to his many and noble virtues. I do not attempt to palliate deception. It is always criminal. But, I am sure, no severity, no reprimand, no reproaches, would have had half the effect which his kindness, his confidence, and his generosity wrought on me. It reformed me thoroughly, and at once. I did not see London again till I had graduated: and if my degree was unaccompanied by brilliant honours, it did not disgrace my uncle’s liberality or his name. Many years have elapsed since our last interview; but I never reflect on it without pain and pleasure--pain, that our last intercourse on earth should have been marked by the grossest deception; and pleasure, that the serious reflections it awakened, cured me for ever of all wish to deceive, and made the open and straightforward path of life. AN OLD STUDENT--[ANONYMOUS.] [Illustration: 308] NECK OR NOTHING. The Art of Tying the Cravat is an art without the knowledge of which all others are useless. [Illustration: 310]