MR Bhosh's diligence at his books was rewarded by getting through his Little-go with such éclat that he was admitted to become a baccalaureate, and further presented with the greatest distinction the Vice-Chancellor could bestow upon him, viz., the title of a Wooden Spoon!
But here I must not omit to narrate a somewhat startling catastrophe in which Mr Bhosh figured as the god out of machinery. It was on an afternoon before he went up to pass his Little-go exam, and, since all work and no play is apt to render any Jack a dull, he was recreating himself by a solitary promenade in some fields in the vicinity of Cambridge, when suddenly his startled ears were dumbfounded to perceive the blood-curdling sound of loud female vociferations!
On looking up from his reverie, he was horrified by the spectacle of a young and beauteous maiden being vehemently pursued by an irate cow, whose reasoning faculties were too obviously, in the words of Ophelia, "like sweet bells bangled," or, in other words, non compos mentis, and having rats in her upper story!
The young lady, possessing the start and also the advantage of superior juvenility, had the precedence of the cow by several yards, and attained the umbrageous shelter of a tree stem, behind which she tremulously awaited the arrival of her blood-thirsty antagonist.
As he noted her jewel-like eyes, profuse hair, and panting bosom, Mr Bhosh's triangle of flesh[A] was instantaneously ignited by love at first sight (the intelligent reader will please understand that the foregoing refers to the maiden and not at all to the cow, which was of no excessive pulchritude—but I am not to be responsible for the ambiguities of the English language).
[A] Videlicet: his heart.
There was not a moment to be squandered; Mr Bhosh had just time to recommend her earnestly to remain in statu quo, before setting off to run ventre à terre in the direction whence he had come. The distracted animal, abandoning the female in distress, immediately commenced to hue-and-cry after our hero, who was compelled to cast behind him his collegiate cap, like tub to a whale.
The savage cow ruthlessly impaled the cap on one of its horns, and then resumed the chase.
Mr Bhosh scampered for his full value, but, with all his incredible activity, he had the misery of feeling his alternate heels scorched by the fiery snorts of the maniacal quadruped.
Then he stripped from his shoulders his student's robe, relinquishing it to the tender mercies of his ruthless persecutress while he nimbly surmounted a gate. The cow only delayed sufficiently to rend the garment into innumerable fragments, after which it cleared the gate with a single hop, and renewed the chase after Mr Bhosh's stern, till he was forced to discard his ivory-headed umbrella to the animal's destroying fury.