The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green

by Cuthbert Bede

"Hallo, Gig-lamps!" shouted the delighted Mr. Bouncer, "nothing like backing up; but it's no use assuming a stern appearance; you'll get your hand in soon, old feller!"

But Verdant found that before he could get his hand in, the ball was got into his wicket; and that while he was preparing for the strike, the ball shot by; and, as Mr. Stumps, the wicket-keeper, kindly informed him, "there was a row in his timber-yard." Thus Verdant's score was always on the lucus a non lucendo principle of derivation, for not even to a quarter of a score did it ever reach; and he felt that he should never rival a Mynn or be a Parr with any one of the "All England" players.

Besides these out-of-door sports, our hero also devoted a good deal of his time to acquiring in-door games, being quickly initiated into the mysteries of billiards, and plunging headlong into pool. It was in the billiard-room that Verdant first formed his acquaintance with Mr. Fluke of Christ Church, well known to be the best player in the University, and who, if report spoke truly, always made his five hundred a year by his skill in the game. Mr. Fluke kindly put our hero "into the way to become a player ;" and Verdant soon found the apprenticeship was attended with rather heavy fees.

At the wine-parties also that he attended he became rather a greater adept at cards than he had formerly been. "Van John" was the favourite game; and he was not long in discovering that taking shillings and half-crowns, instead of counters and "fish," and going odds on the colours, and losing five pounds before he was aware of it, was a very different thing to playing vingt-et-un at home with his sisters for "love" - (though perhaps cards afford the only way in which young ladies at twenty-one will play for love).

In returning to Brazenface late from these parties, our hero was sometimes frightfully alarmed by suddenly finding himself face to face with a dreadful apparition, to which, by constant familiarity, he gradually became accustomed, and learned to look upon as the proctor with his marshal and bulldogs.

At first, too, he was on such occasions greatly alarmed at finding the gates of Brazenface closed, obliging him thereby to "knock-in;" and not only did he apologize to the porter for troubling him to open the wicket, but he also volunteered elaborate explanations of the reasons that had kept him out after time, - explanations that were not received in the spirit with which they were tendered. When our freshman became aware of the mysteries of a gate-bill, he felt more at his ease.

Mr. Verdant Green learned many things during his freshman's term, and, among others, he discovered that the quiet retirement of college-rooms, of which he had heard so much, was in many cases an unsubstantial idea, founded on imagination, and built up by fancy.

One day that he had been writing a letter in Mr. Smalls' rooms, which were on the ground-floor, Verdant congratulated himself that his own rooms were on the third floor, and were thus removed from the possibility of his friends, when he had sported his oak, being able to get through his window to "chaff" him; but he soon discovered that rooms upstairs had also objectionable points in their private character, and were not altogether such eligible apartments as he had at first anticipated. First, there was the getting up and down the dislocated staircase, a feat which at night was sometimes attended with difficulty.