New Monthly Magazine.
SCHOOL AND COLLEGE.
College! how different from school! Never believe a great, broad-faced, beetle-browed Spoon, when he tells you, with a sigh that would upset a schooner, that the happiest days of a man's life are those he spends at school. Does he forget the small bed-room occupied by eighteen boys, the pump you had to run to on Sunday mornings, when decency and the usher commanded you to wash? Is he oblivious of the blue chalk and water they flooded your bowels with at breakfast, and called it milk? Has he lost the remembrance of the Yorkshire pudding, vulgarly called choke-dog, of which you were obliged to eat a pound before you were allowed a slice of beef, and of which, if you swallowed half that quantity, you thought cooks and oxen mere works of supererogation, and totally useless on the face of the earth? Has the fool lost all recollection of the prayers in yon cold, wet, clay-floored cellar, proudly denominated the chapel? has he forgot the cuffs from the senior boys, the pinches from the second master? and, in fine, has he forgot the press at the end of the school-room, where a cart-load of birch was deposited at the beginning of every half year, and not a twig left to tickle a mouse with, long before the end of it? He talks of freedom from care—what a negative kind of happiness! Let him cut off his hand, he will never hurt his nails. Let him enclose an order for all his money even unto us, and no more will he be troubled with cares about the Stocks—no more will he be teased with calculations on the price of grain. All that raving about school-boys is perfect nonsense—it is the most miserable period of a human being's life. Poor, shivering, trembling, kicked, buffetted, thumped, and starved little mortals! We never see a large school but we feel inclined to shoot them all, masters, ushers, and door-keepers included, merely to put them out of pain.
But at College, how different!—There, a man begins to feel that it is a matter of total indifference to him whether he sit on a hard wooden bench, or a soft stuffed chair; there, the short coat is discarded, and he stalks about with the air of a three-tailed bashaw, as his own two, generally, at first, are prolonged a little below the knee; there, his penny tart, which he bought on Saturdays at the door of the school, is exchanged for a dessert from Golding's; his beer, which he occasionally imbibed at the little pot-house, two miles beyond the school bounds, is exchanged for his wine from Butler's.—Books from Talboy's, the most enterprising of bibliopoles, supply the place of the tattered Dictionary he brought to the University, which, after being stolen when new, and passing, by the same process, through twenty hands, is at last, when fluttering in its last leaves, restolen by the original proprietor, who fancies he has made a very profitable "nibble." The trot he used to enjoy by stealth on the butcher's broken-kneed pony, is succeeded now by a gallop on a steed of Quartermain's; and he is delighted to find that horse and owner strive which shall be the softest-mouthed and gentlest charger. The dandy mare, we suppose, has many long years ago made fat the great-grandfathers of the present race of dogs; and old Scroggins, we imagine, has been trod to pieces in boots and shoes, the very memory of which departed long, long before they were paid for. Of old Scroggins—as Dr. Johnson says—and of his virtues, let us indulge ourself in the recollection. Though not formed in the finest mould, or endowed with the extremity of swiftness, his pace was sure and steady—equal to Hannibal in endurance of fatigue; and, like that celebrated commander, his aspect was rendered peculiarly fierce and striking by a blemish in his eye; not ignorant of the way to Woodstock was the wall-eyed veteran; not unacquainted with the covers at Ditchley; not unaccustomed to the walls at Hethrop: but Dandy and Scroggins have padded the hoof from this terrestrial and unstable world—peace to their manes!—Blackwood's Magazine.
SPIRIT OF DISCOVERY.
Friction of Screws and Screw-presses.
An examination of the friction in screws having their threads of various forms, has led M. Poncelet to this very important conclusion, namely, that the friction in screws with square threads is to that of equal screws with triangular threads, as 2.90 to 4.78, proving a very important advantage of the former over the latter, relative to the loss of power incurred in both by friction.—Brande's Journal.