Some of the men rose with a shout to put him to bed, which they
accomplished with difficulty, after dropping him several times,
and left him to snore off the effects of his debauch with one of
his boots on. Others took to doing what mischief occurred to them
in his rooms. One man mounted on a chair with a cigar in his
mouth which had gone out, was employed in pouring the contents of
a champagne bottle with unsteady hand into the clock on the
mantel-piece. Chanter was a particular man in this sort of
furniture, and his clock was rather a specialty. It was a large
bronze figure of Atlas, supporting the globe in the shape of a
time-piece. Unluckily, the maker, not anticipating the sort of
test to which his work would be subjected, had ingeniously left
the hole for winding up in the top of the clock, so that unusual
facilities existed for drowning the world-carrier, and he was
already almost at his last tick. One or two men were morally
aiding and abetting, and physically supporting the experimenter
on clocks, who found it difficult to stand to his work by
himself. Another knot of young gentlemen stuck to the tables, and
so continued to shout out scraps of song, sometimes standing on
their chairs, and sometimes tumbling off them. Another set were
employed on the amiable work of pouring beer and sugar into three
new pairs of polished leather dress boots, with colored tops to
them, which they discovered in the dressing-room. Certainly, as
they remarked, Chanter could have no possible use for so many
dress boots at once, and it was a pity the beer should be wasted;
but on the whole, perhaps, the materials were never meant for
combination, and had better have been kept apart. Others had gone
away to break into the kitchen, headed by one who had just come
into college and vowed he would have some supper; and others, to
screw up an unpopular tutor, or to break into the rooms of some
inoffensive freshman. The remainder mustered on the grass in the
quadrangle, and began playing leap-frog and larking one another.
Amongst these last was our hero, who had been at Blake's wine and
one of the quieter supper parties; and, though not so far gone as
most of his companions, was by no means in a state in which he
would have cared to meet the Dean. He lent his hearty aid
accordingly to swell the noise and tumult, which was becoming
something out of the way even for St. Ambrose's. As the leap-frog
was flagging, Drysdale suddenly appeared carrying some silver
plates which were used on solemn occasions in the common room,
and allowed to be issued on special application for
gentlemen-commoners' parties. A rush was made towards him.
"Halloa, here's Drysdale with lots of swag," shouted one.
"What are you going to do with it?" cried another.
Drysdale paused a moment with the peculiarly sapient look of a
tipsy man who has suddenly lost the thread of his ideas, and then
suddenly broke out with--
"Hang it! I forgot. But let's play at quoits with them."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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