They had given him, however, as befitted careful parents, every chance of acquiring an excellent education. In order that he might afterwards shine at the Bar or in the Senate, he was sent to one of our larger public schools, where he soon found that with a very small life-belt of Latin and Greek a boy may keep his head safe above the ripple of a master's anger. But his school career was not without honour. He was a boy of a frank and generous temperament, candid with his masters, and warm-hearted and sincere in his intercourse with his school-fellows. He was by no means slow with his wits, he was very quick with his eye and his limbs. Thus it came about that, although his scholarship was not calculated to make of him a Porson, he earned the admiration and applause of boys and masters by his triumphs as an athlete, a cricketer, and a foot-ball player, and was established as a universal favourite. At the usual age he left school and betook himself to college, freighted for this new voyage with the affection and the hopes of all who knew him.
And now when everything smiled, and when in the glow of his first independence life assumed its brightest hues, in the midst of apparent success his real failures began. The sudden emancipation from the easy servitude of school was too much for him. The rush of his new existence swept him off his feet, and, yielding to the current, he was carried day by day more rapidly out to the sea of debt and dissipation, which in the end overwhelmed him. For a time, however, everything went well with him. His school and his reputation as a popular athlete assured to him a number of friends, he was elected a member of one or two prominent Clubs, he got into a good set. In their society he learnt that an undergraduate's tastes and his expenditure ought never to be limited by the amount of the yearly allowance he receives from his father. Whilst still in his freshman's Term, he was invited to a little card-party, at which he lost not only his head, but also all his ready money, and the greater part of the amount which had been placed to his credit at his Bank for the expenses of his first Term. This incident was naturally much discussed by the society in which he moved, and it was agreed that, for a freshman, he had shown considerable coolness in bearing up against his losses. Even amongst those who did not know him, his name began to be mentioned as that of one who was evidently destined to make a splash, and might some day be heard of in the larger world. His vanity was tickled. This, he thought to himself, not without pleasure, was indeed life, and thinking thus, he condemned all his past years, and the aspirations with which he had entered his University, as the folly of a boy. Soon afterwards he was found at a race-meeting, and was unfortunate enough to win a large sum of money from a book-maker who paid him.
The next incident in his first Term was his attendance as a guest at a big dinner, where the unwonted excitement and a bumper or two of University champagne upset his balance. He grew boisterous, and on his way home to his rooms addressed disrespectfully the Dean of his College, who happened to be taking the air on the College grass-plot. He woke, the next morning, to find himself parched and pale, but famous. "Did you hear what So-and-So, the freshman, said to the Dean last night? Frightful cheek!"—so one undergraduate would speak of him to another, with a touch of envy which was not diminished by the fact that his hero had been gated at nine for a week.
But it is useless to pursue his career through every detail. He went on gambling, and soon found himself the debtor or the creditor of those whom he still attempted to look upon as his friends. He bought several thousand large cigars at £10 per hundred from a touting tobacconist, who promised him unlimited credit, and charged him a high rate of per-centage on the debt. He became constant in his visits to London, and, after a course of dinners at the Bristol, the Berkeley, and the Café Royal, he acquired, at Cambridge, the reputation of a connoisseur in cooking and in wine. The Gaiety was his abiding-place, the lounge at the Empire would have been incomplete without him: for him Lais added a rosy glow to her complexion and a golden shimmer to her hair; he supped in her company, and, when he gave her a diamond swallow, purchased without immediate payment in Bond Street, the paragraphist of a sporting paper recorded the gift in his columns with many cynical comments. In short, he now knew himself to be indeed a man of the world. Henceforward he seemed to spend almost as much time in London as in Cambridge. It is unnecessary to add that his legitimate resources soon ran dry; he supplied their deficiency from the generous fountain of a money-lender's benevolence. After all, eight per cent. per month sounds quite cheap until it is multiplied by twelve, and, as he always disliked arithmetic, he abstained from the calculation, and pocketed the loan. And thus, for a time, the wheel of excitement was kept spinning merrily. But the pace was too fast to last for long. Somehow or other, soon after the beginning of his third year, his happy gaiety which had carried him cheerfully through many scenes of revelry seemed to desert him. He became subject to fits of morose abstraction. His dress was no longer of the same shining merit, nor did he seem to care, as formerly, to keep his cuffs and collars unspotted from the world. Disagreeable rumours began to be whispered about him. He was said to have failed to pay his card-debts, and yet to have gone on gambling night after night; and at last came the terrible report—all the more terrible for not being fully understood by those who heard it—that he had been posted at Tattersall's.
Undergraduate Society is, however, of an extraordinary tolerance, and if it had not been for his own manifest misery, he might have kept his head up in Cambridge even under these calamities. But he began too late to realise his own folly, and with the memory of his triumphs and his collapse, of his extravagance and his debts clogging his efforts, he tried to read. He did read, feverishly, uselessly, and when his list appeared his name was absent from it. Then followed the fatal interview with his father, and the inevitable crash, in the course of which he became the defendant in a celebrated case on the subject of an infant's necessaries. An occupation was sought for him, but all capacity for honest effort seemed to have perished with his frankness and his cheerfulness. After creeping about London in a hang-dog fashion for a year or two, he eventually decided to tempt misfortune in the Western States of America. For a time he "ranched" without success, and was heard of as a frequenter of saloons. A year later he died ignobly by the revolver of a Western rowdy, in the course of a drunken brawl.
Musical Forecasts.—Mr. Paddy Rewski will play variations on his own national Melodies, including the Gigue Irlandaise, entitled, "Donnybrook Fair."—Mr. Charles Reddie's Pianoforte Recital is fixed for the 17th. It is not placarded about the town, as the clever pianist says, he's perfectly Reddie, but he's not Willing.—Mr. Josef Dash-my-lud-wig is going to give a Second Chamber Concert on behalf of the Funds of the Second Chambermaid Theatrical Aid Society.—Mr. Cusins' Concert is on the 12th. Uncles and Aunts please accept this intimation.
