THE CAMBRIDGE "FRESHMAN."
See a stripling alighting from the Cambridge "Fly" at Crisford's Hotel, Trumpington-street. It is a day or two before the commencement of the October term, and a small cluster of gownsmen are gathered round to make their several recognitions of returning friends, in spite of shawls, cloaks, petershams, patent gambroons, and wrap-rascals, in which they are enveloped; while our fresh-comer's attention is divided between their sable "curtains" and solicitude for his bags and portmanteau. If his pale cheek and lack-lustre eye could speak but for a moment, like Balaam's ass, what painful truths would they discover! what weary watchings over the midnight taper would they describe! If those fingers, which are now as white as windsor soap can make them, could complain of their wrongs, what contaminations with dusty Ainsworth and Scapulas would they enumerate! if his brain were to reveal its labours, what labyrinths of prose and verse, in which it has been bewildered when it had no clue of a friendly translation, or Clavis to conduct it through the wanderings, would it disclose! what permutations and combinations of commas, what elisions and additions of letters, what copious annotations on a word, an accent, or a stop, parallelizing a passage of Plato with one of Anacreon, one of Xenophon with one of Lycophron, or referring the juvenile reader to a manuscript in the Vatican,—what inexplicable explanations would it anathematize!
The youth calls on a friend, and if "gay" is inveigled into a "wet night," and rolls back to the hotel at two in the morning Bacchi plenus, whereas the "steady man" regales himself with sober Bohea, talks of Newton and Simeon, resolves to read mathematics with Burkitt, go to chapel fourteen times a week, and never miss Trinity Church [7] on Thursday evenings. The next day he asks the porter of his college where the tutor lives; the key-bearing Peter laughs in his face, and tells him where he keeps; he reaches the tutor's rooms, finds the door sported, and knocks till his knuckles bleed. He talks of Newton to his tutor, and his tutor thinks him a fool. He sallies forth from Law's (the tailor's) for the first time in the academical toga and trencher, marches most majestically across the grass-plot in the quadrangle of his college, is summoned before the master, who had caught sight of him from the lodge-windows, and reprimanded. His gown is a spick-and-span new one, of orthodox length, and without a single rent; he caps every Master of Arts he meets; besides a few Bachelors, and gets into the gutter to give them the wall. He comes into chapel in his surplice, and sees it is not surplice-morning, runs back to his rooms for his gown, and on his return finds the second lesson over. He has a tremendous larum at his bed's head, and turns out every day at five o'clock in imitation of Paley. He is in the lecture-room the very moment the clock has struck eight, and takes down every word the tutor says. He buys "Hints to Freshmen," reads it right through, and resolves to eject his sofa from his rooms. [8] He talks of the roof of King's chapel, walks through the market-place to look at Hobson's conduit, and quotes Milton's sonnet on that famous carrier. He proceeds to Peter House to see Gray's fire-escape, and to Christ's to steal a bit of Milton's mulberry tree. He borrows all the mathematical MSS. he can procure, and stocks himself with scribbling paper enough for the whole college. He goes to a wine-party, toasts the university officers, sings sentiments, asks for tongs to sugar his coffee, finds his cap and gown stolen and old ones left in their place. He never misses St. Mary's (the University Church) on Sundays, is on his legs directly the psalmody begins, and is laughed at by the other gownsmen. He reads twelve or thirteen hours a day, and talks of being a wrangler. He is never on the wrong side of the gates after ten, and his buttery bills are not wound up with a single penny of fines. He leaves the rooms of a friend in college, rather late perhaps, and after ascending an Atlas-height of stairs, and hugging himself with the anticipation of crawling instanter luxuriously to bed, finds his door broken down, his books in the coal-scuttle and grate, his papers covered with more curves than Newton or Descartes could determine, his bed in the middle of the room, and his surplice on whose original purity he had so prided himself, drenched with ink. If he is matriculated he laughs at the beasts (those who are not matriculated), and mangles slang: wranglers, fops, and medalists become quite "household words" to him. He walks to Trumpington every day before hall to get an appetite for dinner, and never misses grace. He speaks reverently of masters and tutors, and does not curse even the proctors; he is merciful to his wine-bin, which is chiefly saw-dust, pays his bills, and owes nobody a guinea—he is a Freshman!—Monthly Magazine.